LABOR DAY RERUN: This is a devastating Lileks Bleat from late last year, at the height of the Johnny Walker Taliban controversy. But it's a great retort to a pattern seen everyday in the news:
As I’ve said before: replace “Taliban” with “Aryan Nation,” and much of the support would melt away. It’s OK to be a babbling fanatic for a religion as long as it’s not Christianity, because Christianity = the West. To a certain breed of Deep Thinker, the West is the font of all evil in the world; all other evils have arisen solely in reaction to the existence of the West. If John Walker had strapped TNT to his chest and blown up St. Peter’s, these people would dutifully note that the Pope refused to ordain women, and well, intolerance breeds intolerance, and the Crusades did anger a lot of people, so let’s call it a draw - and clap ol’ John on the back for standing up for something.UPDATE: Coincidentally, Matt Drudge links to this article with an update on Taliban John.
IRANIAN-A-RAMA: Glenn Frazier has several links to Iranian topics to chose from on his blog.
Which is a good thing--it's all too easy to forget Iran, as we gear up (or not) to defeat Iraq.
THE VESPER: We've written about this drink before. It's surely the best thing to come from Ian Fleming's imagination since James Bond. And it's the Wired Cocktail Drink of the Week.
...It probably goes well with VodkaPundit's Salt Steak recipe, come to think of it.
JACKIE MASON UPDATE: You've probably already seen this post, since the ubiquitous, omnipresent, all-knowing, all-seeing InstaPundit linked to it earlier today. But just to update our Jackie Mason post from yesterday, Stefan Sharkansky has some very apropos comments on his Shark Blog.
FORD PRUNES CAR LINE: Last week, Eric Peters had an article in National Review Online on how Ford was eliminating the large Excursion SUV from its roster, for politically correct reasons.
Maybe to balance things out, Ford is also disconnecting the "Think" electric car division from its line-up.
COMING SOON TO A RADIO NEAR YOU: Merle Haggard wants a radio talk show. Ken Layne has the details, including quotes by Haggard that are somewhere between circular and Mobius loop. As Layne says, "That would be some kind of talk show"!
I'm still holding out for the Jim Traficant Hour. If Mumia Abu Jamal can give commencement speeches from jail, why can't Trafficant have a radio show from there?
Or maybe TV. It's got to do better than Donahue.
UPDATE: Orrin Judd emails that "Merle was on Imus in the Morning a couple years ago and he had his hat off. An engineer was walking buy a tossed a few coins in it for the poor bum"!
BURTON'S LIST: Joel Mowbray says that Rep. Dan Burton (R., Ind.) is in Riyadh armed with a list of 14 names, as the head of a bipartisan delegation attempting to do something the State Department has neglected to for nearly two decades: Rescue kidnapped American children (some are now adults) trapped Saudi Arabia.
Media Research Center has a video clip of a July John Stossel special which showed how cable music channel VH1 turned booing of Senator Hillary Clinton into cheering:
Senator Clinton was booed when she walked on stage last October at a rock concert in Madison Square Garden to benefit 9/11 victims. It was shown live by VH1 but, as ABC's John Stossel illustrated in a July 20/20 special on media distortions, when the Viacom-owned cable channel replayed it sound technicians replaced the booing with cheering and applause. And that version is the permanent record VH1 put onto its DVD of the event.I've long known that rock stars replace their flubs on live albums through judicious overdubbing. I didn't know that politicians did as well.
Somewhere, George Orwell is chuckling, softly.
BATMAN: THE MUSICAL? We here at EdDriscoll.com have long been fans of Batman, and consider him the definitive comic book superhero. So we were naturally taken aback to read that a Broadway version of the legendary Dark Knight is coming to (the real) Gotham City, according to the Internet Movie Database's Movie & TV News section, which reports:
Tim Burton, who directed the original Batman movie in 1989 and the sequel, Batman Returns, in 1992, has agreed to direct Batman: The Musical! on Broadway, the New York Post reported today (Friday), citing theater sources. Jim Steinman, who composed the music for the show, told the newspaper: "We're thrilled he's going to do it. David [Ives, who wrote the libretto] and I floundered around for a year trying to figure out how to musicalize Batman. Then we looked at Tim's original movie and thought, that's it." The Post quoted sources as saying that the music will cost at least $15 million to mount. Plans are to open it out of town in 2004 and on Broadway the following year."While my first response was fear and terror in all its rawest forms, I did remember having similar thoughts when Michael Keaton was announced as Batman. After a decade of Batman movies, and two other actors having portrayed the Caped Crusader, Keaton in retrospect stands as the best of the bunch. So hopefully Burton won't blow it this time around, either.
(But say, if Burton wanted to make a musical, why not do Planet of the Apes?)
THE SEARCH FOR INTELLIGENT LIFE: Much to his astonishment, Los Angeles police officer "Jack Dunphy" finds it in an L.A. jury room.
UPSIDE DOWN FLAG UPDATE: Orrin Judd emailed me today with the suggestion that perhaps the upside down flags I saw yesterday were a sign that America was in distress after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 rather than protest. The motorist I saw yesterday, I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to, as he had no other bumper stickers that I could see.
The folks I saw on Wednesday had the rear of their car festooned with the usual Bay Area silliness--Free the Whales, Free Mumia, Free Billy Mumy, etc. Something tells me they wouldn't be all that concerned if this nation really was in distress.
And the fact that it's a year later, and we're doing something about terrorism would be cause, one would think, to reverse those upside down flags, lest anyone get the wrong impression.
As someone who has worn hats (Fedoras, Trilbies, and Panama Optimos, not baseball caps with Caterpillar Tractor logos on them) off and on for several years now, I've long taken the "JFK killed the hat industry" myth at its word. However, Snopes' Urban Legends does its usual thorough job of debunking that myth.
However, who killed the morning coat? I have a feeling Kennedy was the last president to be inaugurated in one--which is too bad: it certainly looks sharp on him in Snopes' photo.
Link found on NRO's The Corner, where Jonah Goldberg has been riffing on haberdashery and hirsute males for the past few days, debating the merits of mullets, hats, goatees, and other forms of manly style--or lack thereof.
(Please God, don't tell me that GQ has merged with National Review. The horror....the horror.)
NASDAQ'S SUPERMONTAGE FINALLY CLEARED TO OPERATE. Eileen Colkin of InformationWeek says:
There's nothing like spending $100 million on an IT initiative designed to revolutionize your business only to see it held up for months by politics and bureaucracy. But Wednesday, the Nasdaq Stock Market finally secured approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission ( news - web sites) to officially launch its electronic trading platform, SuperMontage, as early as Sept. 17 and no later than Oct. 11.The platform will let investors see five price levels of stocks, rather than the currently accessible best price. Beyond giving traders more information on which to base transaction decisions, Nasdaq hopes the move will make transactions faster and more efficient by consolidating trades through a single architecture.
BACK TO THE 'HOOD: Well, it's not really my old neighborhood, but I grew up about twenty minutes away from it. Reason looks at Philadelphia, and dubs it the "City of Brotherly Slums".
For me, this article is loaded with flashbacks, especially with all the names that it links to.
And I certainly got a kick out of whom they blame the most for "driving out more Philadelphians than any other single factor"!
THE AMERICAN LEFT HAS LOST ITS WAY AND ITS VOICE, according to Camille Paglia in the London Times Online. Good article, written by someone who should know.
(Found via Andrew Sullivan, for whom Paglia has been sitting in, Joan Rivers-style all month. Joey Bishop takes over each Monday in September.)
UPDATE: InstaPundit links to a couple of articles along similar lines.
MIXERMAN UPDATE: Back at the beginning of the month, I posted a link to a series of posts by "Mixerman", an engineer stuck in a Labrea Tarpit of a major-label rock and roll recording project.
It's now up on Blogcritics as "A Hard Knocks-style Look at The Recording Industry", complete with a link to several more updates from Mixerman, who's now kicking it Weblog-style.
SIDE NOTE: Scroll down to the "Side Note" in the latest Bleat from James Lileks. It's dead-on.
WATCHING THE NUTS: A big chunk of my business and wife's is done via telecommuting. But sometimes you just have to be out in the field. Both yesterday and today, I spent a good hour or more trudging up and down the freeways of San Jose. And both yesterday and today, I saw two different cars with upside down American flags.
Bastards.
In lighter Bay Area nut news, my wife had to be in Oakland this morning for a legal hearing. She passed by the Oakland Coliseum (Ground Zero for the Raider Nation) around 10:30, and noticed several cars in the parking lot with people starting their tailgating party activities for tonight's Raiders game.
At 10:30 in the morning.
With the Raiders playing pitiful Arizona.
In the friggin' preseason, for Christsakes!!
These are officially crazed football fans, folks.
They're nuts. But not as nuts as the upside-down flag folks, and far more benign.
MAKING THE NUT: Whenever I look at a film on the Internet Movie Database, I always look at its "Box Office and Business" page, wondering if it's made it's nut--if it's at least broken even, or made a profit. Otherwise the film is generally considered a failure by Hollywood standards, no matter how much of an artistic success it is.
But that may be changing. The Digital Bits links to a recent New York Times article on DVD, which includes this interesting tidbit:
Some recent hit films, like The Fast and the Furious and Training Day, have earned more money from their DVD releases than from their first-run theater engagements. And for the first time, DVD sales have surpassed those of videocassettes, even though DVD players are in only about a third of American households, compared with a saturation of more than 90 percent for videocassette players.Which makes perfect sense. Where would you rather a watch a film? Snug in your climate-controlled, atmosphere controlled home theater, with only your family, or people you've invited? Or in a crowded movie theater with screaming kids, cellphones ringing, talking audience members, and other minor horrors of modern day civilization in full display?
(There's a whole other post about the decline and fall of Western Civilization here, but I'll save that for another day--or another blogger.)
THE ULTIMATE COMPUTER: Screw that Duotronics stuff on Star Trek. Steven Den Beste has one kick-ass new PC!
THE AWARD-WINNING GREENPEACE: Odds are, you've seen this InstaPundit post. But if you haven't, and if you read this blog regularly, you'll probably enjoy the coverage of Greenpeace's latest award.
TWO TYPES OF RAINMAKERS: The Washington Times says that if Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendening warns of bone-dry conditions and declares a drought warning, plan on bringing along an umbrella:
Three times this year the governor's announcements or plans for regional drought restrictions have been accompanied by heavy rains.Meanwhile, The Washington Post says that President Bush Breaks Fund-Raising Record.
CAN YOU SAY BIASED? Check out the anti-US spin given the Japanese submarine discovered in Hawaii story (which we reported early this morning) in this Independent News article.
It almost implies that America was responsible for Pearl Harbor!
This is either bad journalism, or bad journalism with an agenda. Take your pick.
On the other hand, they do get the type of ship which sunk the attacking sub right. Maybe they read it on Group Captain Mandrake's blog...
Jay Nordlinger and James Lileks break the popular NPR call-in hosts' dirty little secrets. InstaPundit calls it "a huge scandel", on par with finding out "Martha Stewart serves her guests Hot Pockets"!
PICKING DATES OUT OF A HAT: the head of Russia's parliamentary defense committee suggested on Wednesday that US could attack Iraq on September 11.
Meanwhile, according to The World Tribune, a U.S. general tells Israelis the war will start by late November.
(Personally, I like the 9/11 date myself. And I'll bet a lot of Americans feel the same way. Its rapid approach certainly has Saddam worried, doesn't it?)
In any case, Strategy Page has some thoughts on what could happen once "the phoney war" is over.
JACKIE MASON IN HOT WATER AGAIN? Mason, whose career was derailed for years by a rumor that he gave Ed Sullivan an on-air one-fingered salute, is now in the middle of controversy for not wanting to have as an opening act a Palestinian-born comedian. Eugene Volokh has the details (scroll up for more).
Check out this New York Post "Page Six" article for more details.
JAPANESE MINI-SUB DISCOVERED OFF THE COAST OF HAWAII: 60 years later, by the University of Hawaii. It was sunk by a US Navy destroyer just hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Group Captain Mandrake has the details, including a typo that has him in knots. (Pun not intended--honest!)
"SMELLS LIKE DESPERATION" Stephen Green weighs in on the recent collapse of Phil Donahue's ratings, and MSNBC's as a whole. See his comments section for a few of mine.
WHAT THE LEGAL SYSTEM WAS INVENTED FOR: Angry Anna Kournikovafans sue Penthouse for $8.99.
PROFESSIONAL PARIAH Terry Glenn, will, with a little luck, make his debut with the Green Bay Packers on Friday night.
We're certainly keeping our fingers crossed.
MAULED BY REALITY: If, as the old saying goes, a neoconservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality, what does that make an animal rights activist when he's mauled by a grizzly bear?
THEY'RE ALL GONNA MEET AT THE CADILLAC RANCH: James Lileks, Orrin Judd, and those hip swinging cats, Albert Jay Nock and the Remnants, all served up in one tasty post on the Brothers Judd Blog.
(Be sure to read Lileks' screed, which the Brothers Judd link to. It's a classic.)
YOU CAN HAVE MY RIFLE WHEN YOU PRY IT FROM MY COLD DEAD, KUNG FU GRIP! Reason's Daily Brickbat column says:
Airport security at LAX seized a 2-inch toy rifle carried by a young boy's G.I. Joe action figure. "They examined the toy as if it was going to shoot them, said the boy's grandmother. "Then they asked me if there were toy grenades as well. I thought they were joking, but they weren't smiling-they were deadly serious." Security officials say they have orders to confiscate any weapons or replicas of weapons.Meanwhile, digital camera armed citizens are capturing photos of their tax dollars hard at work making American airports safer.
ALL HAIL SENATOR GRONK! Funny how you never see him and Sen. David Banner (R-Marvel) in the same room together.
PLAYING DUMB WITH UNCLE JOE: Cathy Young of Reason focuses on Stalin and his continuing admirers, in her review of British novelist Martin Amis' new book Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million.
She ends with this quote, but be sure to read the rest of the article, to see how she gets there:
Today, the issues raised in Koba the Dread could be seen as purely academic; but they are not. The left's reluctance to acknowledge that Communism wasn't just a failure but an evil is due to more than stubbornness. Such an acknowledgment would amount to (1) validating a view of the West, Communism's Cold War adversary, as good (albeit imperfect), and (2) admitting that the left spent much of the 20th century cozying up to mass murderers and therefore has precious little moral authority to criticize the West today. And that's very relevant to present-day global conflicts.
I LOVE THIS QUOTE: "If I can fight KGB back in Russia, I can fight this."
Meryl Yourish looks at the lone Jewish student being railroaded by SFSU after the University's infamous (at least in the Blogosphere) riot that broke out during a Pro-Israel rally in early May.
THE MAN CAN'T BURST OUR KIND OF EDITOR! Jonah Goldberg, National Review's resident hipster meets South Dakota's resident equivalent of Jack Webb. The predictable droll, Dragnet-like hilarity ensues.
"A SAFE CREW ON TIME". That's what it says on the sides of the Amtrak AEM-7 electric locomotives that run up and down the Northeast Corridor, but this crew took the "on time" part just a little too far:
A man suffered a heart attack on an Amtrak-run commuter train and had to wait about 20 minutes for medical attention while the train made its regular stops. After being alerted to the emergency, the train's crew radioed ahead for an ambulance to meet them at Back Bay station, but continued to make stops before reaching that station. "What I want to know is, what the hell were they thinking?" asks a Massachusetts transportation official. "Somebody's potentially having a heart attack, and they're conducting business as usual?" The stricken man died in the emergency room at Boston Medical Center.
YOU'LL NEVER GUESS WHO WANTS TO BLOCK A NON-POLLUTING WIND-BASED ELECTRICAL GENERATOR. Found via "Lynxx Pherrett's" Web log.
TWO DISTINCT FUTURES: Steven Den Beste of USS Clueless has a post indicating two possible futures for the EU: modern day France or Weimar Germany.
As to the former, check out this comment from one of Den Beste's readers:
I know of a dotcom which decided to expand to Europe, and sent an MBA to set things up. Merely the process of company formation was pretty clear: In France, the process cost $5,000, and took 5 weeks.The bureaucrats of the French and the EU really need to be locked in a room and forced to read, and re-read Jude Wanniski's The Way The World Works, or Robert Bartley's The Seven Fat Years over and over, until the understand how bureaucracies and taxation can kill an economy.In the UK, it cost roughly $100, was done in 45 minutes over the phone, and the package even included a company stamp. So they based their operations in London. (Ever wonder why there were so few french dotcoms?)
Later, the bank refused access to funds in the French bank account until the tax authorities confirmed that no bills were outstanding.
Or better yet, let them try to start businesses of their own, and experience the red tape of the EU themselves.
JUST CATCHING UP with a typically great James Lileks post about the "German invasion of Iraq".
It's a classic. Stop by The Bleat if you haven't seen it yet, either.
(Found via Patrick Ruffini.)
BLOGCRITICS: My latest review is there. I look at a new self-published CD by jazz guitarist and bandleader Nick Kepics.
FULL FRONTAL FISKING of Reuters by Meryl Yourish, at her appropriately eponoymously named blog, Yourish.com.
It's quite impressive, not to mention, quite deserved.
CYNTHIA McKINNEY UPDATE: Here's how Peter Jennings spun the campaign contributions received by McKinney and her opponent.
Meanwhile, Jonah Goldberg questions McKinney's patriotism--or extreme lack thereof.
And don't count her out just yet...
OVERSEAS STEREOTYPES REDUX. Posted by a guest blogger on Sgt. Stryker's site is this:
So there was this nice German women we met in the campground in Burgos, just as the build-up to Desert Storm was getting started, and of course that was the topic du jour, until she said, patronizingly:
"Americans just don't understand about what war really means."
And I smiled politely and said,
"I've got a great-uncle dead in France in the first war, and an uncle there, from the second. I think we've kind of gotten the point."
She changed the subject, real abruptly.(Corporal William Hayden, on the Somme in 1916
Sgt James Menaul, over Schweinfurt in 1943)
SILLY SEASON IN SOUTH AFRICA: Ronald Bailey looks at this week's "World Summit on Sustainable Development" in Johannesburg. I love this excerpt:
A hardy band of anti-globalization activists are denouncing the WSSD as a part of the "corporate global agenda." On Saturday, South African police, using tear gas and stun grenades, broke up an unsanctioned demonstration by a hodge podge of the more extreme activist groups. South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Diamini-Zuma made it clear at a press conference that illegal demonstrations will not be allowed. "In South Africa, there is no anarchy, there is law," she said. And there is something pathetically amusing, or maybe just pathetic, about a bunch of anarchists demanding stronger, more centralized and more intrusive global governance. Kropotkin must be spinning in his grave.Not to mention Nicola Sacco.
DIVERSITY? YOU WON'T FIND IT ON CAMPUS, according to Cella's Review.
(Link via InstaPundit.)
LILEKS IS RIGHT ON THE MONEY: Stop on by his daily Bleat for the reasons why having on-air sex in St. Patrick's Cathedral is both not a bright idea and has nothing to do with protecting or exercising the First Amendment.
It also serves as a good explanation for anyone who's wondering why I try to keep this blog reasonably free of those seven words that a long, long time ago, in an only slightly more innocent age, George Carlin said you couldn't say on TV.
And I think the photo up at the top is a screen capture from The Last Days of Patton, that dreadful mid-1980s TV movie rehash of George C. Scott's brilliant portrayal of Ol' Blood and Guts from 1970.
GREAT HEADLINE ALERT. Spotted on the Brothers Judd Blog: "They're Like Gigantic Chickens on Crack".
RECYCLING: As a writer, I understand the importance of recycling articles and interviews. For example, my Les Paul profile has appeared in a couple of places (and my interview with him has yielded a third article, to be published on dead tree in a month or so--watch this space). My test ride of a Segway was the grist for two articles (and counting).
But this kind of recycling of material is just a bit too far.
OVERSEAS STEREOTYPES: Steven Den Beste takes on a UK reader who thinks all Americans are dumb cow pokes. It's a very amusing post, but this one really stuck out:
Something that might help more would be if all the American tourists wore T-shirts that said things like "I live in New York City and I have a masters degree" (or whatever) but that's not likely to happen in part because we don't want to make foreigners feel bad because most of us are more educated than most of them are. Doing that in their own countries wouldn't be polite.Actually, when Nina and I visited London in May of 2000, almost everyone we met was exceptionally polite with us.
Even Chewbacca, whom we met at a Star Wars exhibition at the Barbizon Art Gallery in London.
Of course, I did let him win at chess.
A SPORT THAT THE BRITISH HAVE TRULY MASTERED. I think that Group Captain Mandrake participates in this sport as well, but strictly as an amateur, to the best of my knowledge.
BRING BACK DDT, says Joseph Farah.
I agree. If it's a case of "us or the mosquitos" (as the West Nile Virus stories are starting to sound like), then it's tough for me to be sympathetic to anyone who sides with the mosquitos.
To see where the anti-DDT hysteria first began in the early 1960s, (not to mention the general stasism of the modern environmental movement), here's a flashback to a couple of our posts from early June on Rachel Carson.
INSTAPUNDIT NAILS THE "McAFRIKA" CONTROVERSY: I had thought of essentially the same thing last night, but couldn't figure out the best way to say it. As usual, Glenn did.
PARTYING LIKE IT'S 1943: The US and Russia team up in raid to snatch 100lb of highly enriched uranium from a nuclear research facility in Yugoslavia in a secret operation to prevent it being seized by terrorists. The UK Times has the details.
UPDATE: Apparently Ted Turner (?!) financed this raid!
A GREAT IDEA FOR A NEW AIRLINE, courtesy of Dennis Miller (courtesy of Glenn Frazier).
RELAXING LOGGING RULES is the subject of this Washington Times article, which says:
President Bush yesterday said a relaxation of logging rules that Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle recently secured for South Dakota should be extended to the rest of America, a move opposed by the Democratic leader.Bush added, "We've got to understand that it makes sense to clear brush. It makes sense to encourage people to make sure that the forests not only are healthy from disease, but are healthy from fire.""My attitude is: If it's good enough for that part of South Dakota, it's good enough for Oregon," Mr. Bush told a cheering crowd of loggers, ranchers and farmers here.
Considering the amount of forest fires this summer, it's about time. And surely Tom Daschle would agree, right?
I.T. BUST CAME EARLIER, RECOVERY COULD ARRIVE SOONER: That's the gist of this InformationWeek article, which says "The technology bubble surrounding the dot-com boom may not have been as immense as first professed. Revised government figures show that the sale of computer hardware in 2000 and 2001--the final years of the dot-com buying frenzy--was sharply lower than initially reported. This could be good news for the IT industry."
RFK ON FX IS DOA: Michael Knox Beran on National Review Online, reviews FX's coming made-for-cable movie about Bobby Kennedy, and finds it shallow, to say the least:
Oliver Stone, say what you will about him, took pains, in his movies, to lay out what he believed to be the historical basis for his beliefs, the evils of big business, the growth of the military-industrial complex, the rise of America as an imperial war state, the ongoing corruption of the country's political life. Dismiss his history, if you like, as shallow and contemptible, the unappetizing daubery of a Sixties' recusant; but it is impossible to deny that he aimed, in such a movie as JFK, at an historical treatment of the events with which he dealt. RFK, by contrast, exists in a kind of parallel made-for-television universe, one from which history has, through some sweet oblivious antidote, been banished.Which is too bad--as the transformation of RFK from a tough cold warrior assisting first Joe McCarthy and then his brother to a typically warm and fuzzy liberal is worth studying, if only to understand what it was about the 1960s that caused so many to lose their focus--and their history.
Just like this TV movie.
Besides the Les Paul article, I have a couple of new book reviews posted there:
Gil Evans-Out of the Cool: His Life and Music by Stephanie Stein Crease.
Inside Classic Rock Tracks by Rikky Rooksby.
And don't forget to check out my earlier reviews, if you haven't done so already:
The soundtrack to Superfly by Curtis Mayfield.
The soundtrack to Rollerball by Andre Previn.
Wow, Gil Evans, Les Paul, Curtis Mayfield and Andre Previn--Eclectic 'R' Us!
U.N. CONSIDERS FACE-LIFT of its iconic Manhattan building, according to this The Washington Times article.
Considering how many of the nations in the U.N. genuinely appear not to like the U.S., why are they staying? This seems like the perfect opportunity to start fresh somewhere else--like France, North Korea, or Libya.
THE TWO DUMBEST QUESTIONS MAY BE DROPPED: According to an article linked to by GC Lionel Mandrake in his letter from the Olde Countrie blog, the two questions that everyone gets asked when they check their bags (you do have them memorized right?) may be dropped. The article quotes Air Transport Association spokesman Michael Wascom, who proves that he's smarter than Norman Mineta, when he says, "All passengers do not pose equal security threats. Why should we continue to ask these simple questions of everyone? We should be focusing on people who are higher security risks."
Now there's a thought!
THE MANY LIVES OF THE MANY LIVES OF LES PAUL: My Les Paul profile is up at Blogcritics.org, complete with photographs of Les and his namesake guitar.
As Jonah Goldberg would say, you should click on the above link like a monkey in a cocaine-addiction study trying to get one last pellet. You should handcuff your children to the computer and tell them they won't eat unless they click on it at least 1,000 times.
Or hey, at least click on it once and stop by--and then click over to some of the excellent other reviews and articles at Blogcritics.
McKINNEY EXCUSE ROUND-UP: What's old saying? "Failure has a thousand excuses, success needs none"? We'll, let's look at the round-up of excuses as to why Cynthia McKinney lost on Tuesday:
It's the Republicans' fault.Because, let's face it: it couldn't have been her own fault, right?
NOW THERE'S NO EXCUSE: Davis Will Sign Bill to Enshrine Roe v. Wade is the headline of this CNSnews.com article, which says, "Legislation specifically designed to protect the 'reproductive rights' of California women, regardless of changes in federal law, is just one signature away from becoming law in the Golden State."
Which means that he'll eliminate the one reason people had not to vote for Bill Simon this fall.
JUST IN TIME TO SERVE AGAINST IRAQ: The Brothers Judd say that GI Joe is getting his Kung Fu Grip back!
MEATHEAD: Reason catches up with Rob Reiner and does not like his latest role.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, over on the East Coast, New Yorkers are about to lose many of their smoking rights as well.
UPDATE: And things aren't looking good for tobacco advertising in England, either.
PROUD OF SAN JOSE: Joanne Jacobs, at readjacobs.com is proud of how apartment-dwellers led their neighbors to safety during a horrific fire this past Monday.
TROUBLE AT MIAMI AIRPORT: It's been partially evacuated; and 36 report respiratory distress, according to this Tampa Bay Online article.
GEORGIA TWOFER: Ed Kilgore, in National Review Online, weighs in on Republican Bob Barr and Democrat Cynthia McKinney, who both were handed their walking papers in yesterday's Georgia primaries.
McKinney of course, has been the subject of numerous anti-idiotarian posts in the blogosphere (search on her name at InstaPundit to see links to a bunch of them), and the subject of this prophetically named Web site.
UPDATE: Why did McKinney lose? Stephen Green (back from his honeymoon, and posting up a storm) finds the real reason why McKinney lost (couldn't have been the combination of her big mouth and vacuous brain--of course not!) and unwittingly beats CNN to the punch. Advantage: VodkaPundit!
SOMETHING FISHY IN THE HATFILL CASE, says Mona Charen, who says that Steven Hatfill (the media's anthrax suspect) has joined Richard Jewell, Ray Donovan and other suspects whose reputations were ruined by the media long before they were actually proven innocent.
THE MOST RIGHTEOUS OF THE RIGHT STUFF: Orrin Judd posts that Chuck Yeager is planning to retire from flying military aircraft after one last sonic boom in an F-15 during the Edwards AFB Air Show on October 26.
Fortunately, he'll still be flying "P-51 Mustangs and various light aircraft".
THINGS I NEVER THOUGHT I'D SEE DEPT: Richard Dreyfuss pens a moving tribute to Charlton Heston in National Review Online.
"THE KERNEL OF EVIL": Saudis withdraw billions of dollars from US.
Too bad. We should have frozen their assets after 9/11.
WE'RE GONNA PARTY LIKE IT'S 1990: Sgt. Stryker looks at media recycling of old headlines.
Does this mean that 'Til Tuesday and Roxy Music are due for comebacks?
NAKED LAUNCH: disorderly nude passenger causes emergency landing of Air France flight.
CAPTAIN SPAULDING posts that today is the 25th anniversary of Groucho Marx's death.
From all of Freedonia, We salute you, President Firefly.
SOUNDS ABOUT RIGHT:
| You are 43% geek | |
 | You are a geek liaison, which means you go both ways. You can hang out with normal people or you can hang out with geeks which means you often have geeks as friends and/or have a job where you have to mediate between geeks and normal people. This is an important role and one of which you should be proud. In fact, you can make a good deal of money as a translator.
|
Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com
(Found via Sgt. Stryker, who's only seven percent geek, and thus gets a cool photo of Ahhhnaaald, instead of this goateed dork with a magnifying glass.)38 SPECIAL: What happens to a quarterback at that age? Paul Zimmerman of Sports Illustrated says very often it's not pretty.
74 DEAD IN RUSSIAN HELICOPTER CRASH IN CHECHNYA, according to this AP article. The Russians don't know yet if it was terrorism or mechanical failure.
THE KILLER BREES: Drew Brees gets the nod at QB in San Diego.
Sorry Doug.
NOT ME DID IT: InstaPundit has some suggestions for the NEA and their jaw-dropping recommendation that teachers be sure not to "suggest any group is responsible" for September 11th, 2001.
HAVE A SAM ADAMS: The Raiders did, for somewhere in the vicinity of two million dollars this year.
STEVE McGARRETT'S NEXT BOSS? Patrick Ruffini links to a George Will article, which says that Hawaii is on the verge of electing its first Republican governor in over forty years.
IT MUST HAVE BEEN A UFO: A Canadian with 2352 small rockets and 4,000 pounds of explosives was arrested in Roswell, New Mexico on Thursday.
There's more--check out Steven Den Beste's post for more details.
TERRELL DAVIS TO RETIRE: The Denver Broncos RB retires due to degenerative knee condition.
HERE'S A HEADLINE YOU DON'T SEE EVERYDAY: The Washington Times says NASA plans to read terrorist's minds at airports.
Beam me up, Scotty--this is is the silliest thing I've seen in ages.
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS KILLS: Steven Den Beste says "The nation of Zambia has decided that it will not accept genetically modified corn. It's available; it's there now; it could be delivered immediately and notwithstanding some people's superstitions there's no reason to believe that it is particularly dangerous to eat it. It is certainly less dangerous to eat genetically modified corn than to eat nothing at all. But the government of Zambia has decided that it's better for their people to starve than to eat genetically modified food."
Den Beste adds:
Mass vaccination of animals can stop foot-and-mouth in its tracks without requiring any slaughter, but at the expense of the destruction of any export market. Accepting GM corn to feed your starving will equally help a famine, with the same destruction of any export market. The only way to not lose your export market in both cases is mass death. Which is what the UK chose last year for its animals, and Zambia is choosing now for its people.Which means that thousands, and maybe hundreds of thousands, of Zambians will starve because of the disagreement between the US and Europe over the use of genetic engineering on food crops.
Inevitably, Europeans will say that Americans are at fault because they're trying to play God, and the Americans will say that the Europeans are at fault because they're frightened of shadows. It really doesn't matter who is right, or how we got where we are. It no longer matters who is at fault. We have to look forward.No matter how we got to this situation, or whose fault it is, that corn does exist, and the people of Zambia need it, and if their government accepts it then thousands fewer of them will die.
SLAP HER, SHE'S FRENCH: I'm sure this film will suck as badly as every Hollywood attempt at a high school film made after Fast Times At Ridgemont High, but it's hard not to like a movie titled...
This film should also do quite well in most foreign cinemas.
SUPERFLY: Stayed up too late last night watching Superfly, which along with Shaft are the zenith of 1970s blaxploitation. Not coincidentally, Shaft was directed by Gordon Parks, who was a brilliant still-photographer before becoming a film director, and Superfly by his eponoymously named son, who unfortunately, died in a plane crash in 1979.
Looking back on it thirty years on, Superfly's photography is often crude, and the acting worse, although Ron O'Neal, Sheila Frazier and Julius Harris acquit themselves nicely. But Carl Lee, as O'Neal's sidekick, seems to have only one facial expression, somewhere between worried and angry, permanently etched on his face throughout the entire film. The action sequences all too frequently consist of little more than men running down city streets.
What makes the film work is the screenplay, which moves along at a nice, and fairly logical clip (with an unexpected interlude for a still-photo montage, brilliantly shot by Gordon Parks Sr.), and...
But of course: it's truly the best part of the film. Clearly working on a limited budget, the filmmakers somehow were precient enough to spend this portion of their funds very, very wisely. Mayfield's music is part Greek chorus, part counterpoint to the action on the film, some of the best music of the 1970s, and the only sense of morality in the film. I'd love to know at what point Mayfield discovered he would be writing music for a film glorifying drug dealers, and decided to insert his own morals into his lyrics. His music makes an otherwise forgettable movie electrifying. Shaft may have had the bigger budget, and was better directed, but Mayfield's score, throughout the entire film, far surpasses Isaac Hayes' soundtrack efforts in Shaft: only Hayes' theme song can stand on equal footing with all of the music that Mayfield wrote, and Johnny Tate brilliantly arranged, for Superfly.
Unfortunately, to borrow a phrase from Les Paul, it seems like a good chunk of Superfly's audience "listened with their eyes", and ignored Mayfield's warnings: visually, Superfly is ground zero for "gangsta rap": huge Cadillacs, even bigger lapels and Fedoras, black gangsters "with a plan to stick it to the man", white policemen pushing drugs themselves (paging Maxine Waters!)--so much of rap culture begins here. (And I can't help but wonder if O'Neal's flowing locks were the inspiration for Al Sharpton's impressively coiffed hair.)
Too bad they didn't listen to the music--they might have learned something.
UPDATE: This review is now also on the Blogcritics site.
BE AFRAID. BE VERY, VERY, VERY AFRAID: This may be the scariest thing I've ever downloaded off the Internet. Alien, The Blair Witch Project, Psycho and The Shining have nothing on this clip.
Small children, and those with weak hearts probably shouldn't watch this.
You've been warned.
(Link via VodkaPundit.)
CATS AND DOGS: If you had asked me five years ago if I'd agree more with Camille Paglia than Brent Scowcroft, I probably would have laughed in your face. But there's more that makes sense than doesn't in this post by Paglia on Andrew Sullivan's blog, where Paglia is guest-hosting, while Sullivan takes a month-long vacation (sounds a bit like Johnny Carson in his heyday! Will Mel Brooks, Joan Rivers, and the Muppets be guest hosting when Sullivan starts taking the inevitable Monday off?). And Scowcroft sounds like he's lost it.
Strange times, indeed.
(Both links via Patrick Ruffini.)
THE AXIS OF MUDDLE: Good Wall Street Journal editorial on Saudi indecision.
KOREAN AIR JET MAY HAVE NARROWLY MISSED DISASTER ON 9/11: Interesting post on the newly reactivated Sgt. Stryker's Daily Briefing:
In a nutshell, USA Today is now reporting that on Sept. 11th the crew of a US-bound KAL 747 indicated they were being hijacked. The flight was not only directed to turn away from Anchorage and the Alsaka pipeline oil terminal at Valdez; it was intercepted by Anchorage-based USAF F-15s and forced to land at Whitehorse, Canada. During the time the airliner was inbound to Alaska, civil and federal authorities evacuated hotels and federal offices in downtown Anchorage and ordered tankers in port at Valdez out to sea. Also during this time, military authorities debated asking for permission to turn the Eagles loose to shoot the 747 down.
LAW & REORDER: FOXNews.com says that "retiring U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson is returning to his acting and legal roots as the new chief prosecutor on NBC's Law & Order".
Which might be lots of fun to watch. Law & Order prior to Chris Noth and Michael Moriarty leaving, was one helluva show, with tightly plotted scripts, a novel structure (always rare for TV), and great atmosphere. Post Noth, and especially post all the spin-offs (coming this fall: "Law & Order: Special Parking Tickets Unit"), Law & Order has just seemed flabby and soft. Maybe Thompson's Steven Hill-like presence will inspire the writers to return to the show's roots as a tough, gritty cop show, instead of a platform for the social issue of the week. (Probably not, but one can hope.)
Fortunately, the early, kick-ass episodes of Law & Order are frequently repeated by A&E I really enjoy watching them.
And apparently, lots of other people do too, as Universal is releasing the first season of the show on DVD this fall.
ELVIS PRESLEY, CONSERVATIVE: That's what the Opinion Journal says, adding:
The critics who gleefully zero in on the glaring gap between the Nixon-deputized antidrug crusader and the addict whose prescription drugs ended up killing him miss the point. Elvis may have been a sinner, but he and his music were too much steeped in a Pentecostal upbringing ever to deny the reality of sin itself. In short, he was a nice Southern boy who got in way over his head.It's a good article, and I completely agree--in retrospect Elvis was very much a conservative, and "a nice Southern boy who got in way over his head".In a recent interview about his novel "Elvis in the Morning," William F. Buckley noted that Elvis might even be thought conservative today, ironically opposing a 1960s culture of liberation that in some senses he helped create and that ended up killing him. Which only tells us that American culture changed far more than Elvis ever did.
By the mid-70s, when I was a young suburbanite first listening to rock music, Elvis was fat, bloated and headed towards the abyss. Which is why he was never a teenage hero of mine--but I can't help wondering what I'd think about him if I was growing up in the 1950s--like the musicians he influenced: The Beatles, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Albert Lee, and a zillion others.
CAREER ADVICE: So You Want to be a Martyr? These pamphlets, found via Little Green Footballs, will help answer many of the questions that precede such a complex career decision.
BEASTS OF THE EAST: Tom Friend of ESPN Magazine says the NFC East is the class of the NFL this year.
THE FINE ART OF GENOCIDE: Critics uncritically buy addled view of Hitler the aesthete.
AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME: Hooters is considering launching an airline.
FLY LIKE AN EAGLE: Randall Cunningham will retire as a Philadelphia Eagle prior to a preseason game against Baltimore next Friday. (Cunningham was a backup QB last year for the Ravens.)
In his prime, Cunningham was an immensely talented quarterback--a true triple threat: he could run, pass, and even punt (which he did at least once) with equal ease--and had some great years with the Eagles, and one absolutely astounding year, in 1997, with the Vikings, after sitting out a year in his first retirement.
ESTONIA, CAPITALIST SUPERPOWER? They seem well on their way, according to this Samizdata post.
DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS: A free energy market in works when proper free market conditions are created, as Texas has proved this summer, according to Samizdata.net.
FOLLOW THE MONEY: Rachel Ehrenfeld, in National Review Online shows how Yasser Arafat made his first billion.
THE MINISTRY OF SILLY HAIRCUTS: Eric Olsen, writing on Blogcritics says that "after 10 lean years in the U.S., [the recording industry in England] is proposing extraordinary measures to restore its stateside standing. Essentially, by early next year it wants to establish a rock and pop embassy-cum-trade mission in New York to be called the United Kingdom Music Office."
Yeah, I guess making better music would be too much hard work.
Steven Den Beste finds a fascinating article that puts the disparate pieces together: anti-globalism, multiculturalism, the International Criminal Court, and several other "isms". Den Beste says, "It also ties in with the entire idea that nations should have high taxes, central control and heavy social spending. These things don't seem to be related, but they all express the same fundamental political philosophy." Den Beste adds:
Transnational progressivism is fundamentally authoritarian; it believes in the rule of the enlightened few over the unwashed masses, for their benefit. They are stupid and cannot be permitted to make up their own minds, and the enlightened few will do the right thing for them despite themselves. It is profoundly repugnant to every value I hold as a Jacksonian and a supporter of the fundamental principles on which the American system was founded.It's a brilliant post--like reading a Toffler book in miniature. "Now I know why they hate us," Den Beste says. Read his post and you probably will understand, too.
VISION QUEST: The Brothers Judd Blog says that the Hubble Telescope is creating a golden age for cosmology, allowing scientists to "see" the beginning of the universe.
Meanwhile, the blind are having their site returned via technology--as InstaPundit quotes from this Wired article, "It used to be a religious miracle, but now it's a scientific miracle."
MR. REYNOLDS GOES TO WASHINGTON: And does not like what he sees.
CASHED OUT: A cattle rancher in Bozeman, Montana had an automatic teller machine installed in his tombstone before going off to the big ATM in the sky:
Cattle rancher Grover Chestnut died earlier this year at the age of 79. However, before he cashed in, he installed an ATM at his tombstone and gave ten heirs debit cards, and told them [they] were allowed to withdraw $300 per week from the grave.It may sound like a grave waste of money but sources say Chestnut figured the tombstone ATM was the best way to make sure his grave had regular visitors.
UNITED WAY: The Washington Redskins are suspending their partnership with it.
MASSACHUSETTS BATTLE BREWING Over Bi-Lingual Education, according to this CNSNews.com article.
WELL, HE IS AN HONORARY DITTOHEAD: Conservatives Use JFK Legacy to Praise Bush, Hammer Dems.
PAGING GAVRILO PRINCIP: Dissidents 'injure' Saddam's son in Baghdad shooting, according to this UK Independent News article.
OFF TO THE BIG WHAM-O PLANT IN THE SKY: Tres Producers has a long post about Ed Headrick, the inventor of the Frisbee, who died recently at 78.
SLEAZY: The Miami Herald says stealth troopers are nabbing speeders by posing as construction workers and surveyors.
THE GRAY DAVIS, BROCK YATES, CARRY NATION CONNECTION: On Tech Central Station.
UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds (thanks for the link today!) has a post today about other Gray shenanigans.
WHY DO I FEEL LIKE STERLING HAYDEN? Group Captain Lionel Mandrake is now writing for Sgt. Stryker, in addition to maintaining his own blog, which began while GCLM was visiting Northern California and staying in my guest room (and helping me sort out the HTML coding to get this blog off the ground).
Mandrake is now back in England, 6000 miles or so from here. The Sarge is currently stationed at Travis AFB, 70 miles north of me. Which means I must be at ground zero of the harmonic convergence of the blogosphere's equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle.
Or something like that. Anyhow, be sure to stop by the Sarge and the Group Captain's sites today--and tell 'em we sent you.
WILLIAM SHATNER IN SPPLAT ATTACK: I have no idea what it means--but how often do you get to use "William Shatner in Spplat Attack" as a headline?
BUILDING THE CONSENSUS FOR AN ATTACK: Group Captain Mandrake finds a second English newspaper that wants to attack the US.
Didn't you boys learn your lesson with the Bay City Rollers? The Spice Girls? Elizabeth Hurley? (OK, I'll give you that last one.)
WHERE'S HANK STRAM AND BUD GRANT WHEN YOU NEED THEM? NFL Players union accuses Vikings, Chiefs of collusion while negotiating contracts with their first-round draft picks.
Keep matriculating the ball down the field, boys!