Posted by Hei Lun

Reading the post below by Tom, I just realized something about Bill Frist.

Bill Frist is John Kerry.

Think about it. Both have been in the Senate for a long time but both have done almost absolutely nothing worthwhile in their time there. Both want to be president, but can give voters no good reason for their candidacies other than that they want to be president. Both want people to vote for them because of what they did before they were Senators (This might surprise you, but did you know Frist is a doctor, and did you know Kerry served in Vietnam?). Few would describe either guy as "principled", as both have shown that they're willing to take any position that they think will get people to vote for them. And neither has any real support by the base of their party.

Hopefully, there'll be one big difference between Frist and Kerry, in 2008.

(File this in the "Hillary looks better every day" category.)

10:26 PM | Link | Politics | Comments (0)

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Posted by Tom

In what is no doubt a carefully considered ethical decision, and not at all a transparent political ploy designed to make himself nationally electable in 2008, Senator Bill Frist has announced he will support loosening restrictions on stem cell research.

I'm a physician. My profession is healing... In all forms of stem cell research, I see today, just as in 2001, great, great promise to heal. Whether it is diabetes or Parkinson's disease, or my own field of heart disease, Lou Gehrig's disease or spinal cord injuries, stem cells offer hope for treatment that other lines of research simply cannot offer.

Is anyone else reminded of that SNL sketch in which Tracy Morgan would dress up like Star Jones and begin every sentence with "I am a lawyer"?

5:19 PM | Link | Politics | Comments (0)

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Posted by Steve

Is diving a sport? NASCAR? What about poker?

What is sport?

With the possible exception of "How Many Five Year-Olds Could You Take On At Once," nothing spurs online discussion like exploring the differences between various forms of competition and debating which ones count as sports.

Which brings us to competitive eating.

10:33 AM | Link | Sports | Comments (0)

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Posted by Tom

It's time to say goodbye to BIOS. If you're lucky, you have no idea what it is, anyway, but the less fortunate have hit F2 or Del to enter setup when their system was booted, and browsed through the myriad options presented. The BIOS doesn't just let you flip settings; it also serves to manage the very low-level hardware on your computer, like RAM, basic video, plug-n-play support, and the built-in hard disk controllers. It translates the commands of more sophisticated programs into the language of your computer's specific chipset.

But most agree that BIOS has outlived its lifespan, and it's time to move on. Apple, for instance, uses OpenBIOS, a newer technology that offers advantages that make it easier to recover from a system crash, boot from the network, or run multiple operating systems on the same computer. Now industry heavyweights like AMD, Dell, HP and IBM are banding together to design a next-gen BIOS architecture called United EFI. That's fine -- but in the process they're going to try to cripple your computer. You shouldn't let them.

1:08 PM | Link | Technology | Comments (0)

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Posted by Kriston

Josh Marshall on the recent debate over the level of access to John Roberts's documents the White House intends to provide to the Senate:

I'm wondering what the argument is, precisely, for the White House having access to any more information in the process of nominating Roberts than the Senate should have in confirming him.

Marshall's logic certainly sounds right to me—that Constitution about which originalism is all the rage definitely says advise and consent. But I suspect that there's a legalistic reason why this doesn't necessarily follow. Anyone have any suggestions?

10:46 AM | Link | Politics | Comments (0)

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Posted by Steve

12:02 AM | Link | Photography | Comments (0)

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Posted by Greg

Wired News has an excellent column by Kevin Kelly up today about the World Wide Web's progress over the last decade. Of particular interest is Kelly's references to the early critics of the Internet (still capitalized by Wired). As Kelly puts it, "the bigger the promises, the louder the nays."

It's not hard to find smart people saying stupid things about the Internet on the morning of its birth. In late 1994, Time magazine explained why the Internet would never go mainstream: "It was not designed for doing commerce, and it does not gracefully accommodate new arrivals." Newsweek put the doubts more bluntly in a February 1995 headline: "THE INTERNET? BAH!" The article was written by astrophysicist and Net maven Cliff Stoll, who captured the prevailing skepticism of virtual communities and online shopping with one word: "baloney."

This dismissive attitude pervaded a meeting I had with the top leaders of ABC in 1989. I was there to make a presentation to the corner office crowd about this "Internet stuff." To their credit, they realized something was happening. Still, nothing I could tell them would convince them that the Internet was not marginal, not just typing, and, most emphatically, not just teenage boys. Stephen Weiswasser, a senior VP, delivered the ultimate putdown: "The Internet will be the CB radio of the '90s," he told me, a charge he later repeated to the press. Weiswasser summed up ABC's argument for ignoring the new medium: "You aren't going to turn passive consumers into active trollers on the Internet."

This brings back memories to me of working as a research assistant for the Political Science department of my undergrad university, circa 1996. I pitched the idea of creating a Web "homepage" for the department to the department head, and—although he gave me the go-ahead to start designing it—my presentation was met with skeptical looks about whether such a "homepage" would ever be of any real practical use. The looks were very similar to the looks I got from my parents when I tried to explain why I thought email would be a great way for the family to start to communicate.

Of course, my children will never know what it was not to have an Internet. Looking back at it, so much of it seems so intuitive now. When I was in high school, I would have loved to have a resource like the Internet Movie Database or the All Music Guide to look up information about my favorite bands and movies. Although my wife swears she learned much of what she knows by reading her family's World Book Encyclopedias, the Web has made the whole idea of encyclopedias something of an anachronism. I think I realized this the other day when I was looking up information on Apache Chief, and then Buckethead, on Wikipedia. Good luck finding such information in the reference stacks at the library. (Of course, it's not just pop-culture. I've found Wikipedia to be extremely useful and remarkably unbiased for researching traditional subjects like religion and history as well.)

Of course, it's not just about reference and indexing information—it's also about things like eBay taking over the garage sale and auction industries—but even critics should now admit that the Internet has proved pretty effective at doing what its supporters said it would. It will be interesting to see what the next decade has in store. From my perspective, the Web has already lived up to much of its early proponents' most optimistic predictions.

2:25 PM | Link | Technology | Comments (0)

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Posted by Venkat

Investments: Henry Blodget at Slate analyzes the portfolio here. He offers some interesting bits:

Those who view Roberts as a robotic starched-shirt, however, should note evidence of a romantic-idealist streak: a chunk of XM Satellite Radio worth between $100,000 and $250,000. This bizarrely out-of-character investment suggests that Roberts is either clairvoyant or not afraid to dream: The stock is up tenfold since early 2003. . . .

Bottom line? Roberts the investor is smart and conservative but, like most of us, prone to following the herd.

Ride: Beldar notes (citing to Kausfiles) that "Roberts appears to drive a Chrysler PT Cruiser." No comment there.

While digging into the kind of car Roberts drives and what his investments say about his philosophy may feel unprecedented, we should remember that the inquiries into nominee Bork's videotape rental habits resulted in the passage of a federal law that protects the privacy of video rental records.

12:06 AM | Link | Law | Comments (0)

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Posted by Greg

Way back in October of last year, I noted that my (then 11-month) son seemed to be favoring his left hand. Today, I saw him throw for the first time. Sure enough, he throws left. I even captured the evidence on video.

Anyone know any good sports agents?

11:00 PM | Link | Miscellaneous | Comments (0)

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Posted by Venkat

Seymour Hersh drops another bomb in this week’s New Yorker. Although the NYT covered the story last week, it didn’t seem to get much play in the blogosphere.† Hersh reveals the administration’s plans to influence the Iraqi elections.

The article recounts the administrations efforts to fund and provide other support for preferred candidates (i.e., Aalawi). One of the main proponents of influencing the elections was Thomas Warrick, a senior adviser on Iraq from State Department. Warrick’s plan, which had the backing of the National Security Council involved “using forty million dollars that had been appropriated for the election to covertly provide cell phones, vehicles, radios, security, administrative help, and cash to the parties the Administration favored.” The NGOs and other administration officials raised a stink — for the obvious reasons.

1:55 PM | Link | Politics | Comments (0)

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Posted by Tom

Vardan Kushnir, one of the world's most notorious spammers, has been found dead in his apartment, the victim of a brutal murder. Of course his actions were irritating, and of course he didn't deserve to suffer physical retribution for them, much less a violent death. There isn't much more to say -- except, perhaps, to point out that opportunistic businessmen in Russia need to worry about running afoul of more than just the law.

4:28 PM | Link | Technology | Comments (0)

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Posted by Kriston

From the LAT (courtesy of Unfogged), an alarming revelation about John Roberts, who has otherwise presented a relatively inscrutable case for those Court watchers who wonder how or whether the nominee's personal conservatism might affect his decisionmaking:

According to two people who attended the meeting, Roberts was asked by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) what he would do if the law required a ruling that his church considers immoral. Roberts is a devout Catholic and is married to an ardent pro-life activist. The Catholic Church considers abortion to be a sin, and various church leaders have stated that government officials supporting abortion should be denied religious rites such as communion. (Pope Benedict XVI is often cited as holding this strict view of the merging of a person's faith and public duties).

Renowned for his unflappable style in oral argument, Roberts appeared nonplused and, according to sources in the meeting, answered after a long pause that he would probably have to recuse himself.

Now, what Roberts has expressed isn't the sort of subtle judicial temperament that a SCOTUS candidate can expect to hide from a Senate confirmation, so I imagine we will receive some clarification of his position shortly. As he's stated it, Roberts would recuse himself from rendering verdicts in cases (as opposed to recusing himself from the cases themselves) in which he's facing a conflict of interests. That makes him a Roy Moore judicial radical, putting him to the right of the entire Court, the Bush administration, most congressional theoconservatives, and American public opinion. For Roberts to hold such a position without exhibiting the tell-tale signs of public looniness (e.g., Roy Moore) would make him something akin to a criminal mastermind. So I'm sort of inclined to believe that Roberts will backpedal and clarify that when it comes to the death penalty, abortion, social justice, sex, gender, business, and legal issues affecting war, Roberts intends to abide by U.S. law.

It's nevertheless an alarming passage, not at all indicative of the steel trap of a legal mind he's said to possess.

UPDATE: According to the NYT, Durbin and his press secretary insist that the exchange Professor Turley reported never took place. According to the Washington Times, Turley says that he was informed of the exchange by . . . Durbin and his press secretary. Strange little game of telephone here, but I think it's essentially a non-story. And that's a good thing.

4:22 PM | Link | Politics | Comments (0)

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Posted by Venkat

The Ninth Circuit issued an interesting decision holding that an employer can be liable for changing an employee's name from Mamdouh to Manny:

"El-Hakem's racial discrimination claims stemmed from Young's repeated references to El-Hakem as "Manny." Despite El-Hakem's strenuous objections, Young insisted on using the non-Arabic name rather than "Mamdouh," El-Hakem's given name. In Young's expressed view, a "Western" name would increase El-Hakem's chances for success and would be more acceptable to BJY's clientele."

The dynamic of names in the business (and high school and elementary school) context is an interesting one. My name is pretty easy to pronounce if you slow down and read through it. It never ceases to amaze me how often people mess it up. Of course, special points for people who take the time out to pronounce it well. Does it sometimes create an awkward moment during business interactions? Sure. After many years, however, I have learned to view it as the other person's problem and not mine.

3:51 PM | Link | Law | Comments (0)

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Posted by Venkat

I learned pretty late in life that "peruse"† actually means to read carefully. I think through popular mis-usage the meaning is actually changing to the opposite. I wonder who picked that word and which meaning they intended??

What other words or phrases have totally changed their meaning (to the opposite meaning) through popular usage?

† Think Progress quotes a Bloomberg article: "On the flight to Africa, Fleischer was seen perusing the State Department memo on Wilson and his wife, according to a former administration official who was also on the trip."

3:04 PM | Link | Miscellaneous | Comments (0)

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Posted by Venkat

[The other] De Novo, the local magazine of the Washington State Bar Association young lawyer's division chatted with me about my blogging experiences. You can access a pdf version here.

I had no idea about De Novo's readership, but crazily enough, a slew of people e-mailed me after reading this. Well, maybe not quite a slew.

3:28 AM | Link | Blogosphere | Comments (0)

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Posted by Hei Lun

Last week Greg wrote about Hillary Clinton's comments about the hack in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas that lets players make the characters in the game perform sex acts on one another. Since then I've read more about this and have become progressively more pissed off. No, not at Hillary—not that I favor regulation of the video game industry, but reactions from politicians like her I'm used to and don't get worked up about anymore. No, the people I'm angry at are the weasels at Rockstar, the company behind the game, and the people who insist on defending the company.

12:14 AM | Link | Culture | Comments (0)

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Posted by Tom

C|Net is reporting on a new crowd-control system being considered by the military. The device works by shooting high-frequency microwaves at subjects, heating their skin to painful levels -- but without causing permanent damage. Well, provided the subject gets out of the way.

That's fine, I guess -- nobody should expect weapons systems to be pleasant. But, troublingly, the article mentions that a vehicle-mounted prototype of this weapon is scheduled to be deployed in Iraq next year. This strikes me as a pretty bad idea.

I'm sure there are serious crowd dispersal problems in Iraq. But should we really be deploying experimental weapons -- weapons that burn their subjects with invisible rays -- to a region where tensions between the populace and our forces are already being stretched thinner every day? We've already got an experimental sonic weapon deployed in Iraq for dispersing crowds, in addition to standbys like tear gas and (where available) high-pressure water cannons.

Of course our first priority must be getting U.S. troops the tools they need -- but this weapon's appeal seems to be rooted in novelty moreso than necessity. Let's find somewhere else to start firing microwaves at people. It seems like we've already conducted more than enough experiments in Iraq.

1:21 PM | Link | Politics | Comments (0)

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Posted by Greg

Randy Barnett has an interesting critique of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts. Here are some key excerpts:

John Roberts is who you get when the President finally nominates the "best qualified" candidate. I mean truly best qualified as measured by college and law school degrees (both Harvard), grades (summa, Harvard; Magna, Harvard Law School), clerkships (Friendly, Rehquist), post law school job (Chief Deputy SG), big prestigious law firm job. He is widely reputed to be considered by the Justices themselves as among the very best Supreme Court oral advocates around today. And no one dislikes him.

But what sort of Justice will Judge Roberts make? I have no idea. I have never met him, so all I have to go on is his public record--a record of enormous accomplishment. But so far as I know, we know nothing about what he stands for apart from the fact that he is undoubtedly politically conservative. Is he an originalist? We don't know. Is he a majoritarian conservative like Robert Bork? We don't know. Would he find any limits on the enumerated powers of Congress? We don't know. Would he have ruled with the majority in Kelo? We don't know.

. . .

John Roberts appears to be the quintessential A+ student. That means being very smart, working very hard, and generally scoping out what the teacher wants to hear--which includes just the right amount of intellectual disagreement. Indeed, these would seem to be the qualities most desired in a judicial clerk who needs to anticipate and articulate the views if his judge, a Deputy SG who needs to voice the views of the administration, a Supreme Court advocate who needs to figure out what the justices want to hear while making his client's case, and an appellate judge who is trying faithfully to anticipate and follow Congress and the Supreme Court. Add to this what appears to be an admirable personal character and you have the "best qualified" person to sit on the highest court. But what may be missing is a judicial philosophy that will withstand the rigors of decades on the Court.

None of this would appear to cast doubt on the confirmability of Roberts. Rather, it probably helps him. But at the same time, it doesn't do much to calm conservative anxiety about a Souter-like stealth nominee, nor does it give liberals much assurance either way. Instead, it looks like Bush has exchanged a short-term safe bet (confirmation) for a long-term risk (judicial disposition). Whether it pays off in the end probably depends entirely on your point of view.

1:43 PM | Link | Law | Comments (0)

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Posted by Kriston

One really gets the feeling that the rodeo clown appeared at just the right moment* when you consider what might have been the topic for discussion today:

White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove did not disclose that he had ever discussed CIA officer Valerie Plame with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper during Rove’s first interview with the FBI, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The omission by Rove created doubt for federal investigators, almost from the inception of their criminal probe into who leaked Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak, as to whether Rove was withholding crucial information from them, and perhaps even misleading or lying to them, the sources said.

Also leading to the early skepticism of Rove's accounts was the claim that although he first heard that Plame worked for the CIA from a journalist, he said could not recall the name of the journalist. Later, the sources said, Rove wavered even further, saying he was not sure at all where he first heard the information.

* Okay, the metaphor doesn't quite work. What we have here is el Matador staging a bullfight so that the clown can escape.

11:45 AM | Link | Politics | Comments (0)

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Posted by Venkat

A couple of quick follow up points and questions on Roberts:

1. Is Roberts a Political Hack? So say John at AMERICAblog and Digby. I would love to know their definition of "political hack." I think that's a stretch under any definition.

2. Will Roberts be a Catholic Judge, rather than a Justice who happens to be Catholic? That's the implication of Feddie's post here at Southern Appeal. Roberts also has the endorsement of the Family Research Council. I think there's scant evidence on which to base that conclusion. But maybe then know something I don't.

3. Does Roberts present a Souter problem? Will he turn out to be less reliably conservative than people expected? A few people have asked that question. (See, e.g., here.) As Linda Greenhouse notes in her NYT article from today, it's pretty tough to tell. Some Justices veer left (like Souter and O'Connor) and some stay where they are or veer right. That's something tradesports should allow trading on.

10:48 AM | Link | Law | Comments (0)

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Posted by Greg

Well, at least we know he didn't waste a lot of time trying to be original in his approach. You can read what John Kerry has to say about Supreme Court nominee John Roberts in the post immediately below. Or, you can just go to the People for the American Way's website and read it on the front page:

People for the American Way is extremely disappointed that the President did not choose a consensus nominee in the mold of Sandra Day O’Connor. John Roberts’ record raises serious concerns as well as questions about where he stands on crucial legal and constitutional issues – it will be extremely important for Senators and the American people to get answers to those questions. Replacing O’Connor with someone who is not committed to upholding Americans’ rights and legal protections would create far-reaching and long-lasting harm to Americans’ lives and liberties.

It's like déjà vu all over again, isn't it? Or, you don't suppose that Kerry and PFAW are reading from the same script? Maybe?

In any event, I'm pleased that Bush's nominee meets my own personal minimum threshold requirement: that it be someone the PFAW dislikes. Luckily, I think that was pretty much a given.

UPDATE: Due to the PFAW and John Kerry's new-found love for Sandra Day O'Connor, it might be relevant to point out what the retiring justice thinks of the nomination. According to the Spokesman-Review, O'Connor was pleased:

Her first words were unequivocal: "That's fabulous!" she said. She immediately described John G. Roberts as a "brilliant legal mind, a straight shooter, articulate, and he should not have trouble being confirmed by October. He's good in every way, except he's not a woman."

Hopefully, all those other good qualities will make up for Roberts' Y chromosome.

(†Orrin Kerr at VC.)

10:32 AM | Link | Politics | Comments (0)

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Posted by Venkat

Howard Bashman has links to the bio, resume and statements in support of Judge Roberts, GW's nominee to replace Justice O'Connor.

Raw Story quotes Kerry's release:

We know Judge Roberts is no Sandra Day O'Connor, and the White House has sent a clear signal. There are serious questions that must be answered involving Judge Roberts' judicial philosophy as demonstrated over his short time on the appellate court. The Senate must learn whether he has clear consistent principles upholding Constitutional standards like civil rights, the right to privacy and Roe v. Wade. These issues are in serious question if you take even a cursory glance at his record.

The American people expect the Senate to fulfill its duty to conduct a thorough, independent review of any nominee, and I intend to do exactly that. I hope Judge Roberts and the White House are forthcoming about his qualifications, background and constitutional philosophy so the Senate can act with all the facts. There's too much at stake to do anything less.

† He's a good pick on substance anyway. In addition to his widely acknowledged intellectual strengths, he is (or was) a practitioner. An in-the-trenches SCOTUS lawyer has seen the good the bad and the ugly, and this in itself is probably enough to temper any raw ideological influence. Kudos to GW on this one. [Minor edits added.]

10:48 PM | Link | Politics | Comments (0)

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Posted by Kriston

No matter where you stand on the Plame/Rove scandal, you have to appreciate the singular beauty in this small detail from the resume of Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin: From a client who had allegedly laundered drug money Luskin apparently once accepted more than half a million in attorney's fees in rather dubious forms of payment, including "gold bars, cash that was dropped off at hotels and trunks of cars, and money transfers from Swiss bank accounts." Yeah. Gold bars. I can't venture even an implausible circumstance in which an attorney or anyone else could do so without suspecting that he might be just a little crooked.

(No, it doesn't have real bearing on the case. When life imitates art and all.)

4:24 PM | Link | Politics | Comments (0)

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Posted by Kriston

President Bush will name his nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court tonight at 9 p.m. The Washington Post suggests that "[w]hile many Republican strategists are anticipating that his choice will be Judge Edith Clement of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, other observers were cautious about speculating."

Karl who, right? While the White House was badly in need of a diversion, what with the press smelling blood in the water and public opinion of the White House's cooperation with the Plame investigation plummeting rapidly, but I'm not so sure that opening a third theater was the wisest move. The costs of Rove, Bolton, and potentially a SCOTUS nominee might add up to more political capital than President Bush has.

1:40 PM | Link | Politics | Comments (0)

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Posted by Tom

A newly released study conducted by Cornell and UC Berkeley claims that ethanol production invariably requires greater fossil fuel input than it produces in renewable energy output. No doubt there is still room for debate -- this study maintains that soybeans, switchgrass, corn and wood are all net energy losers, a conclusion that is significantly at odds with other appraisals of biomass' viability as an energy source. It seems likely that more research is necessary to reach a definitive answer.

But everyone agrees that of the various candidate crops, corn is the worst. Yet it's the only crop currently being used for significant amounts of energy production. The reason, of course, is the corn subsidies that various interests ensure are lavished upon domestic maize production. It's not a situation that seems likely to change: the heartland's population has a disproportionately large amount of political power, and during every election cycle a considerable amount of it is directed toward ensuring that America grows and pays for much more corn than we actually need.

But you probably know all of this. You know corn subsidies are wasteful, and you know they prevent farmers in the developing world from lifting themselves out of poverty. But did you know that these subsidies also make your cola taste worse?

Yup, American soda uses high fructose corn syrup, a corn byproduct that, thanks to subsidies, is marginally cheaper and considerably more stable in price than the tastier cane or beet sugar found in the cola of yore. And aside from tasting worse, HFCS may also be a contributing factor in America's obesity epidemic. Connoisseurs stock up on Mexican Coke and Passover Coke, the two occasionally-available versions of the beverage that still use real sugar (reports are mixed on Canadian Coke).

Misspent billions; misguided energy priorities; Americans expect and tolerate these things. But by God, we should brook no soda less than what the Founders intended!

UPDATE: Going through the archives, I see that Hei Lun wrote about HFCS and its health implications last August -- have a look there, too.

UPDATE 2: It appears I overstated the case against corn as a fuel. This newest study still didn't find it to be the most efficient crop for ethanol production, but it was hardly the worst. Corn's efficiency has gotten a lot of bad press, and others have made specific cases against it and in favor of switchgrass, or sugar cane, or beets, or whatever. But still -- while this study broadly condemned ethanol as a viable alternate fuel, it didn't single out corn as the worst. The picture is further complicated by corn requiring more and better land than other energy crops like switchgrass. Whatever the specific order of ethanol-producing efficiency, corn subsidies are still a bad idea.

2:13 PM | Link | Economics | Comments (0)

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Posted by Hei Lun

Here's my contribution to the latest blog meme the "Ten Unforgettable Sports Moments that You Actually Saw (not ones you saw later on tape)" († Dan Drezner, who has his own list):

1. Back-to-back shots by Tim Duncan and Derek Fisher in Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals, 2004. After Duncan drills a jump shot from almost three-point range with less than a second remaining, Fisher hits the three on a catch-and-shoot to put the Lakers up 3-2 in the series. At the time, I had thought (correctly) that the winner of that game would go on to win the series, and thought (incorrectly) that the winner would sweep the winner from the East, which turns out to be the Pistons.
2. Edgar Martinez's double in Game 5 of the ALDS against the Yankees, 1995. This was my full year of being a baseball fan. I remember little Joey Cora dragging a bunt down the third base line, followed by a sharp single by Ken Griffey, Jr. Then Martinez doubles, and Griffey, running as hard as someone could possibly run, barely beating the throw home. Good times.
3. Brain Daubach's three-run homer in Game 3 of the ALDS against the Indians, 1999. It's not that important a moment, but I remember it because I was in the stands at the time and had predicted on a whim that he would hit a home run right before it happened. (He had been struggling against left-handers before that at-bat.) He hit it while the score was tied at five; the Red Sox went on to score 20+ runs to win that game.
4. Pedro Martinez's six no-hit innings in relief/Troy O'Leary's grand slam in Game 5 of the ALDS against the Indians, 1999. Also known as the game that got Mike Hargrove fired from the Indians. Martinez was dominant when he entered the game tied at 8, but it looked for a few innings as if the Red Sox weren't going to score either. Then in the eighth, the Red Sox had second and third with no one out with Nomar Garciaparra up. Hargrove chose to walk Nomar, which was perfectly reasonable, as in at least two similar situations in the two previous games they had pitched to Nomar and both times he got a hit. But much like every decision Hargrove made in that series, it backfired.
5. Ron Artest jumping into the stands, 2004. I didn't see the foul that started the sequence of events but flipped the channel to that game, which was on ESPN, right after that.
6. Michael Jordan's final minute in Game 6 against the Jazz, 1998. Down by three, he hit a shot, picked Karl Malone's pocket in the post, then hit the game winner after shoving Bryon Russell out of the way.
7. Mark McGwire hits number 62, 1998. It was a line shot, unless most of his other towering drives. Then he missed first base!
8. The tuck rule and the snow angel, Patriots vs. Raiders, 2002. Yes, that was a tough way for the Raiders to lose, even though the referees made the correct call. But what has been forgotten is that the Raiders could have won if they 1) converted a 2nd-and-1 with two minutes remaining, 2) stopped the Patriots on a third-and-10 after the tuck rule play, 3) tried to score after the Patriots had tied it with a minute remaining instead of taking a knee, or 4) stop the Patriots from driving 70 yards right down the field in overtime. The game winning field goal was a chip shot, but everyone around here still remembers long snapper Lonnie Paxton's snow angel in the end zone after that.
9. Adam Vinatieri's field goal to win Super Bowl XXXVI against the Rams, 2002. At that time few Boston sports fans had any reason to be optimistic about anything, and I'm usually a nervous Nelly who can't eat or drink while there's a tense game, but I had absolute confidence that Vinatieri was going to hit that field goal, even though it was 48 yards away. (I had little confidence that Brady would lead them down the field with only a minute remaining, but what do I know.)
10. Foulke to Mientkiewicz, 2004. Especially memorable because since then I've seen it on replay literally more than a hundred times.

10:50 PM | Link | Sports | Comments (0)

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Posted by Hei Lun

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by J.K. Rowling

This is probably my second or third favorite in the series, behind Prisoner of Azkaban and maybe Sorcerer's Stone, though that's subject to change. Unlike the last two books, it doesn't have as many events that are only loosely related to the main plot, and focuses mostly on the two main storylines.

The best parts of the book are its beginning and its end. It begins with two Harry-free chapters; the first brings us up to date while being very funny at spots, and the second chapter was probably the most interesting one at that point of any in the book. Then Rowling returns us to Harry and tones down the intensity significantly. This might be the slowest-paced book since the first one, as not much of seeming significance happens for almost the whole book, until the last 100-or-so pages when Rowling ties the disparate pieces together and the book really shines. I can't say much without spoiling it, but Rowling as usual gives us a big surprise, but even though I expected one I never saw it coming. Then it gets better as Rowling sets the stage for the finale in these last emotion-filled pages.

The only disappointment is the storyline with the half-blood prince—the prince never plays much of a role in the book, and the whole storyline could have been left out entirely wthout affecting much else in the book. But maybe I missed something—will have to see in my second go-around.

9:09 PM | Link | Fifty Book Challenge | Comments (0)

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Posted by Greg

I'm not going to pretend otherwise. I first heard of Sufjan Stevens less than a month ago. But based on the sheer ubiquitousness of reviews and hipster references, Illinois is his breakout album. Suddenly, Sufjan is everywhere. Maybe he's not a household name, but he's certainly achieved hipster chic status.

My first exposure to Stevens was when I read this Dusted Magazine review. Shortly later, I read a glowing review at Kulturblog. Now it seems reviews are popping up everywhere. My favorite record store is selling Illinois so fast they can't keep the CD in stock. (That's really only half the story. The other half is that shipments have been delayed due to a cease-and-desist letter from DC Comics because of the presence of Superman on the album's cover art. Good Records was kind enough to hold a copy with the original art, which I could probably turn around and sell on eBay, but I won't. Stevens' record label has reissued the album with the superhero pained out of the sky.)

Illinois is the second edition of the ambitious 50 State Project. (Michigan came first, and according to Wikipedia, Wyoming is rumored to be next.) References to Illinois among the album's 22 songs abound: the Sears Tower, Mary Todd Lincoln and Carl Sandburg, Frank Llyod Wright, and the Black Hawk War, among others. At the same time, many of the songs are introspective and personal.

To say that Stevens is a multi-instrumentalist would be something of an understatement; on Illinois he plays acoustic guitar, piano, organ, bass, drums, electric guitar, oboe, alto sax, flute, banjo, glockenspiel, accordion, vibraphone, recorder, electric keyboards, tambourine and triangle. He's also got the help of several friends (dubbed "the Illionoismakers") who play various instruments and add background singing. To the casual music fan, that can seem a bit intimidating. Yet, Stevens' songs are, for the most part, simple and accessible, with the instrumentation layered on for texture and depth. It's not unlike The Polyphonic Spree, Beck or Badly Drawn Boy, or some of the more musically ambitious offerings from Ben Folds.

I suspect that Stevens' appeal has to do with his ability to simultaneously sound ironic and sincere, which is certainly an asset in this decade. Many of the songs have a folksy warmth, but others (for example, "Come On! Feel the Illinoise!" - clip) have an self-consciously amateurish appeal akin to the community theater production in Waiting for Guffman. You can assume that the audience is in on the joke, but also get the sense that Stevens is celebrating simple things in life. This album may very well play as well in Peoria as it does in Manhattan, Stevens' current place of residence.

Despite being ecclectic, the album is pretty consistent. A few songs, like "Casimir Pulaski Day" (clip) and "Jacksonville" (clip) stand out from the rest. By far, the creepiest moment is during the song "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." when Stevens sings (clip) "And in my best behavior/I am really just like him/Look beneath the floorboards/For the secrets I have hid." It's particularly jarring because the accompaniment is so pretty. The only times the album loses me are the rare moments when the songs go on a bit too long (as in the final song "Out of Egypt, in to the Great Laugh of Mankind, and I shake the dirt from my sandals as I run"), or the arrangements become so sparse that they're almost not there ("The Seer's Tower"). But the album is filled with great moments that make up for its indulgences.

7:32 PM | Link | Music | Comments (0)

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Posted by Hei Lun

If you don't want to see any spoilers for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, do not read this review in the New York Times. My 99% spoiler-free review will be up later.

7:22 AM | Link | Fifty Book Challenge | Comments (0)

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Posted by Kriston

The New York Times on Pentagon-authored interrogation techniques practiced at Gitmo and expanded upon at Abu Ghraib:

There are countless reasons to be outraged about the abuses of detainees at American military prisons. But there is one abuse about which there can surely be no debate, even among the die-hard supporters of President Bush: the exploitation and debasement of women serving in the United States military. This practice must come to an immediate end, and the Pentagon must make it clear that such things will never be tolerated again.

Surely no one can approve turning an American soldier into a pseudo-lap-dancer or having another smear fake menstrual blood on an Arab man. These practices are as degrading to the women as they are to the prisoners. They violate American moral values—and they seem pointless.

2:18 PM | Link | Politics | Comments (0)

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Posted by Greg

Perhaps the strongest indication that Hillary Clinton is planning a run at the White House: she's taking on the immorality of video games.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is calling on federal regulators to investigate the latest version of Grand Theft Auto, a popular video game series that allows players to go on simulated crime sprees.

In a letter she is sending Thursday to the Federal Trade Commission, Mrs. Clinton expressed concern over reports that anyone who used a free code downloaded over the Internet could unlock sexually graphic images hidden inside the game, called Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Mrs. Clinton asked the commission to determine "the source of this content," especially since the game can fall into the hands of young people. The game industry's self-policing unit, the Entertainment Software Rating Board, is investigating whether the maker of the game violated the industry rule requiring "full disclosure of pertinent content."

In case you hadn't heard, a hot coffee modification/hack, available for download (Google it yourself), of the popular GTA: San Andreas video game allows users to make the characters perform sex acts on one another. As Steve noted earlier, GTA:SA isn't exactly a known for it's socially benevolent content. The controversy is only days old, but already the junior Senator from New York has jumped on the issue, calling on the FTC to regulate.

It's not the first time that Democrats have found themselves on the "values" side of the culture war, of course. Senator and former Vice-Presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman was quite fond of calling Hollywood onto the carpet for sex and violence. And before that, there was Frank Zappa's arch-foe, the PMRC, lead by Tipper Gore.

I've got to wonder if this move isn't just a bit calculated on the part of Senator Clinton. Surely she has political advisors whispering strategies for the 2008, and some of these folks are bound to have hit upon the notion that the best way to fight charges of radical liberalism is to attack the game makers and alleged pornographers while protecting the kids. Unfortunately, on a practical level, the types of kids who know how to hack GTA:SA probably also know how to thwart even the most high-minded senator's attempts to save the kids from themselves.

8:26 PM | Link | Politics | Comments (0)

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Posted by Tom

Did anybody else catch the duplicitous and insidious bit of viral marketing conducted during the All-Star game this week? I did, and I wrote about it at the time. So did the Register -- they managed to write about it without erupting in a geyser of profanity, so theirs might be the link to follow. This is a family blog, after all.

Being marketed at in this manner makes me really, really angry. But perhaps I'm the only one.

5:35 PM | Link | Media | Comments (0)

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Posted by Hei Lun

The lovely Allison (aka Mrs. BTD Greg) has tagged me with this book meme. So off we go:

1. How many books do you own?

Probably between 150-200. I have one full bookshelf, which is five levels high and at a glance seems to hold a little more than 30 books per shelf. I also have a slowly growing pile of books lying on the floor. Not that I don't have space for them—I have a second, smaller bookshelf, though right now it's filled mostly with old magazines I didn't want to throw away (you'd never know when I'd need to look up something in SI's 1996 baseball preview) and a stack of all my notes and papers from college. I got off to a late start in my book collection, since my parents never had a book in the house, and it never occurred to me until recently that I should be spending my money on books.

Of the books I do have, it looks as if more than a third of them are texts from college. Of the rest most of it comprises children's fiction, some sports books, and all of Scott Adams's Dilbert books, with the rest too disparate to group into categories. It's almost totally devoid of political books, except for the twin volumes Democrats Do the Dumbest Things and Republicans Do the Dumbest Things.

2. Last book I bought:

I don't remember the exact dates of when I bought books online and at the bookstore, but the last book to show up in the mail was Everything and More: A Complex History of Infinity, by David Foster Wallace. Pop math books is one category of which I've been thinking of reading more.

3. Last book I read:

I just read Dinner with a Perfect Stranger: An Invitation Worth Considering, by David Gregory (not the MSNBC reporter), yesterday in one sitting. Horrible book. I'll probably have a full post on it within this week.

4. Books that have meant a lot to me:

Let's start with the Narnia books. I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in seventh grade and liked it so much that I promptly went to the library and read all the other books in the series one by one. Then a few years ago I bought the whole box set and read them again. And with the movie coming out later this year I'll probably at least read the first book again.

I mentioned Scott Adams's Dilbert books. Reading those in high school gave me the cynicism that I had for the first few years of college. If not for them I might have been a bit more susceptible to political indoctrination from either side. When you have a low opinion of everybody you're not going to think that any one group is going to consistently have the answers.

I also like Lord of the Flies, though I still have no idea why.

Oh and did I mention I really like the Harry Potter books? I might have mentioned them once or twice.

5. Tag five people:

I'm not much in favor of passing memes, since it seems to be the sort of elitist and exclusionary thing that the blogsphere shouldn't be about. So I'll tag the next five people who read this and want to participate.

11:41 PM | Link | Fifty Book Challenge | Comments (0)

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Posted by Hei Lun

With the baseball season more than half over at the All-Star break, I can say that despite finally seeing their team win the World Series after all these years, most Red Sox fans haven't changed one bit from the way they were before.

After the Red Sox victory last October, there was some speculation that Sox fans would lose their identity as fans of a perennial loser. The theory was that now that their team has finally won one, the link that binds the fans together no longer exists, and the fans would become complacent and not care as much as they did before. Many people like me thought that this theory was bunk, and that skepticism has been borne out by the reactions of Sox fans to their team's well-being so far this year. Red Sox fans are still the most pessimistic, negative, and unforgiving fans in all of baseball.

Consider what one would have heard one day earlier this year on the sports radio station in Boston. Complaints that team management did a horrible job in free agency over the winter. Resignation that last year was just an aberration and that the Yankees would be better this year. Chants of "Cabrera's better!", alluding to the decision by the front office to let shortshop Orlando Cabrera go and replace him with Edgar Renteria. (Fans used to cheer "Nomar's better!" at Derek Jeter.) Calling David Wells an "embedded Yankee". All this negativity, and it was only Opening Day. Yes, after the team won the World Series, it took all of one game for fans to start complaining as if the whole thing never happened.

Since then, the second most popular topic has been how poorly Kevin Millar has played at first base and calls to replace him. This, even though last year there were the same calls to replace Millar at first for the first half of the season, and the manager's decision to stick with him paid off as he heated up in the second half. The most popular topic has been how poorly Mark Bellhorn has played at second base, despite his more than respectable on-base percentage (he's third in the league in walks) and his excellent defense. Most of these fans also have short memories, forgetting that during last year's ALCS against the Yankees, fans were also calling for his benching in favor of Pokey Reese, only to see him hit the crucial three-run homer in a 4-2 win in game 6, hit another home run in game 7, then delivering the game-winning home run in game 1 of the World Series. Many fans have also been complaining about Manny Ramirez's subpar performance, most notably his sub-.300 batting average. For those who are confused, this is the same Manny Ramirez who is leading the A.L. in home runs and all of baseball in RBI. The focus on these position players is especially strange considering that the team had been leading all of baseball in runs scored for most of the season.

And it's not as if the team hasn't been winning. They have the exact same record as they did a year ago at the time, and unlike last year, they're currently in first place in the division, the first time since 1995 that they have been leading the division as late as the all-star break. Remarkably, they have done this without much contribution from their three best pitchers from last year. Pedro Martinez is now a Met, Curt Schilling has pitched two games so far with nothing to show for it, and Keith Foulke has struggled the whole year and is now on the disable list.

From the way Sox fans have been acting so far, however, you'd think their team is 10 games behind the Yankees. Maybe if the Red Sox won two World Series titles ...

11:14 PM | Link | Sports | Comments (0)

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Posted by Greg

I hadn't heard this one before, but it makes a certain amount of sense. Ann Althouse passes on this rumor from Steven Bainbridge: Justice Stevens may join the group of retiring judges if Chief Justice Rehnquist announces his retirement. Quoth Bainbridge: "The theory is that Stevens will be willing to let Bush fill his slot only if there are so many spots available that Bush will feel free and/or pressure to nominate at least one moderate. If true, my guess is that the three slots would go to: Alberto Gonzales, probably as Chief, since he's Bush's closest judicial friend and Bush seems so eager to appoint the first Hispanic; Edith Jones (or possibly Janice Rogers Brown) so that a woman replaces O'Connor; and Michael McConnell to make both business and social conservatives happy."

Althouse adds: "This makes sense. If he thinks he may need to go before the end of Bush's term or if he thinks there is a good chance that the next President will also be conservative, he ought to take advantage of the current bunch-up. The best hope of getting replaced by a moderate rather than a strong conservative really is to have your vacancy become part of a three-person deal."

While I think Banbridge's guess are just that, I like the logic at work here. With three justices, one from the right, middle and left, turning over, it's much more likely to become a complex negotiation, with each side feeling they must give and take. I'm sure Stevens has considered this, and none of these three are getting any younger.

2:09 PM | Link | Law | Comments (0)

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Posted by Tom

Is John Tierney kidding? I honestly don't know. The proposals related to maximizing the irony of punishment for criminals seem like a joke, but they come right after a very-real and very-monstrous economic justification for capital punishment.

Tierney's idiocy aside, there is a real point to be made here: punishments for computer crimes -- and by this I include intellectual property violations -- are escalating rapidly. And while there's no doubt that the damage caused by electronic criminals is real, it's also true that it's primarily financial damage, that it primarily affects businesses, and that it does so in ways that depress bottom lines but don't seriously disrupt individuals' lives. For the foreseeable future, hypotheticals about computer viruses jamming up Grandpa's wifi-enabled pacemaker are nothing more than paranoid fantasy.

Of course we should fight electronic crime, but the relationship between the severity of the punishment and its deterrence value is warped by the anonymity of internet technology. If we're intent on pursuing this approach to combatting computer crime, we're going to find ourselves handing out horribly unjust sentences on the odd occasions when a cracker or pirate is successfully caught.

1:01 PM | Link | Technology | Comments (0)

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Posted by Tom

Many of you are probably aware of Ken Tomlinson, the chairman of the Coporate for Public Broadcasting, and his ongoing efforts to cure PBS and NPR of their supposed media bias. The resulting internecine struggle first came to light in this New York Times article, and it's been slowly playing out in outlets like the Diane Rehm Show.

But in order to fulfill his desire to make PBS programming reflect the Republican mandate (which he stated at a meeting in Baltimore and subsequently denied), Tomlinson first had to prove that bias existed. CPB's own ombudsman clearly couldn't be trusted due to his obvious liberal leanings (such as, uh, being an adjunct fellow at a conservative thinktank, and publicly endorsing a Republican gubernatorial candidate).

So Tomlinson set out to prove the bias himself. MediaMatters has a good rundown of the fiasco that resulted. Surveys were commissioned, and Tomlinson says they've been released to the public -- but in fact they haven't. As Salon reports, the reason for this is that the results were too favorable -- people think NPR and PBS are pretty even-handed. What results were released include the revelation that more than half of the US population feels that public broadcasting is not biased.

Next, with the help of the then-director of the White House Office of Global Communications, two additional ombudsman positions were created. Sadly for Mr. Tomlinson, the Washington Post is reporting today that the ombudsmen's early verdicts are glowing with praise. That's probably not what Mr. Tomlinson was hoping to get for his $40 an hour.

None of this is likely to stop him, though. Ham-fisted as his attempts to justify a crusade have been, they weren't Tomlinson's first big moves at CPB. That distinction belongs to his seemingly-personal vendetta against Bill Moyers, which involved hiring someone to specifically watch NOW for signs of bias, and pushing to give shows to Tucker Carlson and the WSJ editorial board with the specific goal of providing counterbalance. I'm sure that these new shows are/were both fine programs, but Tomlinson's philosophy seems to be that if a media outlet is biased in one direction, it can be fixed by adding bias tilting toward the other direction. It's a laughably shallow understanding of what constitutes good and fair news coverage.

I have no doubt that the typical CPB employee, the typical NPR listener, and the typical PBS viewer is a liberal (although surveys show that when asked to self-identify by ideology, the public broadcasting audience is very evenly split). But that, by itself, is not enough to prove that the system is stacked against conservatives: the situation is analogous to talk radio, where conservatives prosper not because of a conspiracy within the industry, but because of a combination of historical accident and some difficult-to-identify properties of the medium that suit its content to a particular audience. I have to wonder whether those loudly alleging a leftward tilt to public broadcasting actually watch or listen to any of it. I've seen and enjoyed firebreathing leftist media, and this simply ain't it.

So Tomlinson went looking for bias and came up empty. You might assume that unexpected results would prompt him to change his hypothesis. I wouldn't count on it, though. Public Broadcasting's consistent excellence is just a theory, after all.

10:52 AM | Link | Media | Comments (0)

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Posted by Venkat

This CSM article provides anecdotal evidence that the war in Iraq has proved to be a recruiting bonanza for Al Queda types (obviously, the flip side is that it's not a recruiting bonanza for the likes of the US):

A Saudi ideologue who goes by the handle "Lewis Attiyatullah" online and with whom Paz [the head of the Project for the Research of Islamic Movements in Israel] held an e-mail correspondence with until Lewis apparently went underground, spelled out what Al Qaeda and its ideological allies see as the benefits of the US presence in Iraq in an open letter to Tony Blair first published in April 2004.

In his letter, Lewis said he expects that fighting in Iraq will create "a resistance that would develop into a culture of jihad," and that attacks must be made on Western capitals like London that have supported the war in Iraq. He also expresses pleasure about how Iraq, in his view, is inducting new members into the global jihad. "I wish you could listen to what the returnees from Iraq say. Fighting the enemy became their greatest pleasure ... this notion became like a virus for them."

This New Yorker article on the Madrid bombings paints a complex picture, and is a good read. It straddles the line between the "clash or civilizations" philosophy and the view that the actions of the US (GW) have broadened the reach of Al Queda. (How does the internet change things, and what can or should we do to address this??) It's a pretty important question, and one that doesn't have an obvious answer: whether "[t]he Iraqi alumni are going to be more dangerous than the Afghan alumni."

3:56 AM | Link | Politics | Comments (0)

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Posted by Hei Lun

From this morning's edition of the Daily Prophet:

The identity of the half-blood prince has been revealed by a Muggle reporter, writes Rita Skeeter, Special Correspondent. In his column last Friday for the Muggle newspaper Chicago Sun-Times, reporter Robert Novak leaked the identity of the half-blood prince in an article about J.K. Rowling, the biographer for The Boy Who Lived, Harry Potter. The Muggle court had previously ruled that no one may disclose the identity of the half-blood prince before the highly anticipated sixth part of Harry's biography comes out this Saturday.

"Robert Novak has had a history of breaking the law by revealing the identity of secret agents in the past," says Josh Marshall, a wizard undercover in the Muggle world and a reporter for the magazine Talking Points Memo, which can only be accessed through a magic box that the Muggles call a "computer". In an exclusive interview with the Daily Prophet, Marshall tells us it's likely that Novak received the information from someone trying to discredit Ms. Rowling. Says Marshall, "she's made a lot of enemies because many writers who have influence with the Muggle government are envious of the attention she's been getting, and a lot of people in the wizard world aren't happy with her at all after she exposed the blunders of the Ministry last year. I wouldn't be surprised if this reached the highest levels of both the Muggle government and the wizard government."

Indeed, in Novak's article on Rowling, the identity of the half-blood prince is revealed when Novak quotes an anonymous "acquaintance" of Rowling's. According to this person, who somehow got a hold of an early copy of the biography, Rowling must have fabricated the story of the half-blood prince because, as he was quoted in Novak's article, "it's too far-fetched. I mean, how could he possibly be the one? It's like Rowling just made this stuff up, don't you think?" Marshall thinks it's likely that the anonymous person is a writer whose works of fiction has seen its sales decline after Rowling began publishing Harry's biography. "The story of Potter and the Dark Lord is so fascinating, and it's all true. How can these other writers compete? One of them must have found this information and decided to leak it so that the book wouldn't sell as well."

Both wizards and Muggles are calling their governments to investigate the matter. "First they framed me into being a supporter of the Dark Lord, and now there's false rumors of this Mudblood prince to distract the public of the injustice of my imprisonment. This is an outrage!" says Lucius Malfoy, speaking from a jail cell in Azkaban. The Muggle president, meanwhile, is considering appointing an investigator, though with their strange laws that sometimes allow reporters to hide their sources, and a strict ban on a Muggle version of Veritaserum, it's likely that any discoveries will be made by an investigation by the Ministry itself.

There are others who believe that the leak of the prince's identity is merely a big misunderstanding. "The person who told Novak about the Man with Four Pints probably didn't think Novak was going to publish it at all", says Tom Maguire of Just One Minute. "He probably just told this to Novak so that he and the rest of the media wouldn't keep writing nice things about Rowling." Mark Kleiman, another self-publisher on the computer who is also a professor for the three-time Collegiate Quidditch Cup winner UCLA, disagrees with the intent of the leak, which he thinks is malicious, and points out that even if Maguire's version of events is true, a crime has still been committed. Kleiman, an expert on the social effects of Muggle Herbology, says "When you consider that the leaker probably got the information from the copyright offices of our government, you'd be naive to think that the leaker didn't mean to do damage to Ms. Rowling."

An owl to Novak for an interview has not been answered.

2:01 AM | Link | Fifty Book Challenge | Comments (0)

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Posted by Hei Lun

Potential spoilers from books 1-5 below.

1. We'll be no closer to finding out whose side Snape is really on.
2. Ron will have a girlfriend, but it won't be Hermione.
3. Percy was a spy for Dumbledore all last year.
4. People who will die: Hagrid, Peter Pettigew.
5. The half-blood prince is Salazar Slytherin.

5:41 PM | Link | Fifty Book Challenge | Comments (0)

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Posted by Tom

The story's a few days old, but I think it's still worth noting that the EU has voted down a proposed directive that would have established software patents. Nerds of the world rejoice!

3:40 PM | Link | Technology | Comments (0)

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Posted by Steve

Christopher Hitchens vs. Ron Reagan is not a fair fight.

RR: Christopher, I'm not sure that I buy the idea that these attacks are a sign that we're actually winning the war on terror. I mean, how many more victories like this do we really want to endure?

CH: Well, it depends on how you think it started, sir. I mean, these movements had taken over Afghanistan, had very nearly taken over Algeria, in a extremely bloody war which actually was eventually won by Algerian society. They had sent death squads to try and kill my friend Salman Rushdie, for the offense of writing a novel in England. They had sent death squads to Austria and Germany, the Iranians had, for example, to try and kill Kurdish Muslim leaders there. If you make the mistake that I thought I heard you making just before we came on the air, of attributing rationality or a motive to this, and to say that it's about anything but itself, you make a great mistake, and you end up where you ended up, saying that the cause of terrorism is fighting against it, the root cause, I mean. Now, you even said, extraordinarily to me, that there was no terrorist problem in Iraq before 2003. Do you know nothing about the subject at all? Do you wonder how Mr. Zarqawi got there under the rule of Saddam Hussein? Have you ever heard of Abu Nidal?

RR: Well, I'm following the lead of the 9/11 Commission, which...

CH: Have you ever heard of Abu Nidal, the most wanted man in the world, who was sheltered in Baghdad? The man who pushed Leon Klinghoffer off the boat, was sheltered by Saddam Hussein. The man who blew up the World Trade Center in 1993 was sheltered by Saddam Hussein, and you have the nerve to say that terrorism is caused by resisting it? And by deposing governments that endorse it?

There's more. Read the whole thing.

1:37 PM | Link | World | Comments (0)

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Posted by Venkat

Josh Marshall passes on a tip that Rehnquist already "submitted his [resignation] letter, but the WH is sitting on it until next week because they want this weekend to be All Terrorism, All the Time."

2:39 AM | Link | Politics | Comments (0)

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Posted by Greg

In honor of the impending release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I present this recent Achewood strip:

1:11 AM | Link | Culture | Comments (0)

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Posted by Venkat

This is supposedly a picture of "Maryland basketball coach Gary Williams eating chicken wings with two young women."† (For comparison purposes here's his picture on the University of Maryland web site.)

Gar is screaming for a caption contest.

Some possibilities:

Gary Williams, Finger-Lickin' Good [courtesy of Milbarge]
Put down the chicken wings and let the little women go

† BTQ and L cubed (via t-rexin').

1:06 AM | Link | Miscellaneous | Comments (0)

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Posted by Kriston

With the rumors mills abuzz with the pre-story that Chief Justice William Rehnquist will retire before lunch, the science of SCOTUS analysis has broadened to a full-bore multivariable calculus. Josh Marshall sees an advantage for Democrats: In short, insofar as the Democrats leveraged the staging of the nuclear filibuster battle for the SCOTUS, concurrent objectionable nominees is that much more evidence the court of public opinion that President Bush is trying to stack the Court with ideologues—should it come to that. The converse is that two distinct nomination battles are easier victories for the right than one nomination war.

12:47 PM | Link | Politics | Comments (0)

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Posted by Steve

Lee Harris observes that the Islamist campaign against the West is more like a blood feud than a military operation.

In the blood feud there is no concept of decisive victory because there is no desire to end the blood feud. Rather the blood feud functions as a permanent "ethical" institution -- it is the way of life for those who participate in it; it is how they keep score and how they maintain their own rights and privileges. You don't feud to win, you feud to keep your enemy from winning -- and that is why the anthropologist of the Bedouin feud, Emrys Peters, has written the disturbing words: The feud is eternal.

Harris is always thought provoking (he also links to his own fascinating 2002 essay Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology) but I question the applicability of the blood feud analogy to a situation in which only one side is feuding.

10:19 AM | Link | World | Comments (0)

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Posted by Steve

This is fascinating and depressing. It's an animated map showing the location and date of each coalition casualty in the Iraq war. As you watch it, you keep waiting for the pace to slow down. But it doesn't. It hasn't.

5:19 PM | Link | World | Comments (0)

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Posted by Steve

The bombings in London occurred this morning. At this moment, I have not seen a better source for all kinds of information, including photos and first-hand accounts, than this Instapundit post. Debates about the relative merits of the old and new media often focus on the strengths and weaknesses of each. At a moment like this, those debates seem irrelevant.

What's important to me now is how I can get a lot of information that interests me in a convenient manner. The mainstream media is doing a great job providing fact-checked updates on the essential information from London and reactions around the world. The blogs are providing all of that, plus much, much more.

If you want to know what's happening in London right now, Instapundit is orders of magnitude more useful than CNN or the New York Times.

UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis: "We have now reached the point where we could be assured that when a big news event happened, witnesses would be online with accounts of it in a matter of minutes. News was never like that. But now, that's the way it is."

2:02 PM | Link | Blogosphere | Comments (0)

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Posted by Kriston

All our hearts go out to our greatest ally. As of this writing, between the three tube station bombs and bus bomb there are 33 reported deaths and hundreds of serious injuries, numbers both that are likely to rise. An al Qaeda affiliate has claimed responsibility; the attack, staged redundantly, is in keeping with previous al Qaeda strikes. A nightmare the world should not be so familiar with, regardless of who set the bombs.

11:12 AM | Link | World | Comments (0)

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Posted by Steve

12:19 AM | Link | Photography | Comments (0)

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Posted by Hei Lun

There are now only ten days to go until thousands of kids and their disgruntled parents flood bookstores and supermarkets all over the country at midnight to pick up the latest Harry Potter book. For the last week and a half I've been re-reading the first five books (I've lost count of how many times I've read each one; most of them were done before I found other time-wasting activities like "blogging" and "full-time job"). I had thought that three weeks would be plenty of time to get through the five books and their 2700-or-so pages; as it turns out, three weeks was probably way more time than I needed, as I'm already in the middle of the fifth book (maybe I'll have time for two re-reads!). I guess that happens when sometimes I planned on spending half an hour reading before bed and next thing it's two hours and a hundred-plus pages later.

An idea I have is a blogger symposium on the new book, similar to the Kelo symposium that SCOTUSBlog hosted. I'd do it myself but I don't think I'd have the time or the minimal knowledge of programming to pull this off. Anyone want to take this idea and run with it?

Anyway, over the next week or so I'll probably put up several more posts on new things I've picked up on my re-read and predictions (the Half-blood prince is ... Elton John!) and what not. And once the book comes out, it'll be open-the-floodgates.

Here's a couple of links: For the latest news on the book release, the best place to go is the blog The Leaky Cauldron; for in-depth discussion with some hardcore Harry Potter-loving adults there's the Yahoo discussion group HPForGrownups.

10:57 PM | Link | Fifty Book Challenge | Comments (0)

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Posted by Steve

Ever wondered what a scantily clad digitized woman would look like falling and bouncing through a random maze of bubbles? Wonder no more. Hint: if she gets stuck, give her a nudge with the mouse.

12:36 AM | Link | Culture | Comments (0)

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Posted by Steve

Don't miss DC Chak, a new blog written by a frequent contributor to the BTD Forum.

The early focus is on the housing bubble, including signs of a tipping pointand a spotlight on Baltimore.

If the blog is like DC Chak's comments in the Forum, it will be a thoughtful and well-sourced read. We'll be checking often. You should too!

4:01 PM | Link | Blogosphere | Comments (0)

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Posted by Greg

The Chicago Sun-Times had a pretty good rundown of potential Supreme Court nominees a few days ago. It's not comprehensive (I wouldn't be surprised if the nominee is none of these) and focuses a bit too heavily on Roe v. Wade for my tastes, but it's a good basic primer just the same.

(† Spoons.)

12:25 PM | Link | Law | Comments (0)

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Posted by Greg

10:35 AM | Link | Photography | Comments (0)

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Posted by Kriston

Lawrence O'Donnell:

I revealed in yesterday's taping of the McLaughlin Group that Time magazine's emails will reveal that Karl Rove was Matt Cooper's source. I have known this for months but didn't want to say it at a time that would risk me getting dragged into the grand jury.

McLaughlin is seen in some markets on Friday night, so some websites have picked it up, including Drudge, but I don't expect it to have much impact because McLaughlin is not considered a news show and it will be pre-empted in the big markets on Sunday because of tennis.

Since I revealed the big scoop, I have had it reconfirmed by yet another highly authoritative source. Too many people know this. It should break wide open this week. I know Newsweek is working on an 'It's Rove!' story and will probably break it tomorrow.

But with a potentially epic Supreme Court nomination battle down the road, decreasing support at home for the war in Iraq, a possible recess appointment for the controversial John Bolton, and so on, does President Bush have the political capital to spare in order to mount a massive campaign to save Rove's job? We'll have an answer sooner than later. Another compelling question: Did Rove perjure himself on October 15, 2004? And so long as we're getting to the bottom of various mysteries, I'd like to know: Does antifreeze really pump through his veins?

UPDATE: Eh, I'm slow on the draw.

2:28 PM | Link | Politics | Comments (0)

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Posted by Tom

Via Kevin Drum, I see that the always-entertaining Lawrence O'Donnell is saying that Karl Rove is responsible for revealing Valerie Plame's name to the press, and that the story will break in Newsweek and other outlets over the next few days.

Perhaps most surprising is that O'Donnell initially revealed this information at a taping of The McLaughlin Group, a show considered (at least somewhat unfairly, I think) to be an irrelevant relic and clubhouse for the less criminal of the Nixon apologists. I've got a Tivo season pass for sentimentality's sake -- I used to watch the show with my dad when I was a kid (ah, the innocence of a DC childhood). Also, it's good to see people yell at Tony Blankley. Somebody has to do it.

1:47 PM | Link | Politics | Comments (0)

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Posted by Greg

This is a huge development.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who made history as the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court, announced her retirement on Friday, setting the stage for a political battle over her successor.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't quote a news article in its entirety, but that's all Reuters has so far. If it seems just days ago that partisans itching for a fight were getting restless, that's because it was. Then, the news was that Chief Justice Rehnquist had not announced his retirement. Although the Chief Justice might not be changing soon, O'Connor, who tends to be more of a swing voter, coalition-forming justice than Rehnquist, has a greater net effect on the Court than Rehnquist, and therefore her retirement is more significant.

I've always liked and admired Sandra Day O'Connor. Before we launch into the inevitable partisan sniping, I just wanted to take the time to pay my respects to one of the Court's great jurists. I've always found her opinions to be very intelligent and insightful.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse calls the news a "thrilling excitement" and has the text of O'Connor's resignation.

10:46 AM | Link | Law | Comments (0)

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