In case you were wondering

I am: Robert A. Heinlein Beginning with technological action stories and progressing to epics with religious overtones, this take-no-prisoners writer racked up some huge sales numbers.

Which science fiction writer are you?

Miscellany

F. Murray Abraham syndrome: The Oscar curse.

DIY PITV: Poirot.

Jews against Israel: Incendiary essay.

Shit happens: David Bell.

Battling the banal: The Champs-Élysées.

Stop the madness

Andrew McCarthy takes the Bush administration to task for its repetition of the Fatah-is-moderate meme.

Hamas is proudly unyielding in its announced intention to vaporize the “Zionist entity.” By contrast, Fatah is cagier but no less determined. In the Arafat style, it feints every now and again toward negotiation with Israel. There is, after all, a trough of Western billions for any Palestinian leadership willing to affect aspiration toward the Clinton/Bush nirvana: two states, Israel and “Palestine,” living side-by-side in peace. Fatah needs those billions to keep its operatives loyal. Historically, it is a pervasively corrupt, creakily socialist outfit — a former Soviet client averse to elementary economic development.

But the act is just that, an act. The Fatah constitution still calls for the “eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence[,]” through an “armed revolution” which is to be the “decisive factor in the liberation fight and in uprooting the Zionist existence” — a revolution that “will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is completely liberated.”

Consistent with this overarching plan, the U.S.-led “peace process” has been a 14-year sham — hence, the intervening Intifada and related terror gambits. Fatah may occasionally say it will live with Israel, but it has demonstrated, repeatedly, that it will never agree to the commonsense requirements of coexistence: It not only demands land and Jerusalem as its national capital; it refuses to disarm terrorist militias and insists on a refugee “right of return” — an influx of well over a million Palestinians that would effectively destroy the tiny Jewish state from within.

By our State Department’s lights, this qualifies as “moderation” — perhaps because Hamas’s direct approach is bereft of diplomatic nicety, while the savvier Fatah seems willing to attrit Israel to death. (Such new gloss on the withering Bush Doctrine is also on display in Baghdad, where the administration now regularly consults with Abdul Azziz al-Hakim, or, as the White House describes him, “His Eminence,” leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq — a creation of Iran).

I've been pretty disappointed with Condi Rice's recent reanimation of the "peace process," which the Bush administration seemed to have let fall by the wayside until recently.

Mmmm .... no!

James Joyner, echoing Ann Althouse, says that Barack Obama's adoring admirers are afflicted with the soft bigotry of low expectations.

I’ve often made the comparison between Obama 2007 and Colin Powel circa 2000: non-threatening black men with the ability to express themselves extremely well and without the baggage of having taken a lot of public stances on controversial issues. Another comparison, though, is illustrated by an old Chris Rock joke: “People say Colin Powell speaks so well. What’d they expect him to say? ‘Ahmma drop me a bomb’?” There’s something incredibly condescending to think of saying that a man who has risen to the ranks of 4-star general or United States Senator is “articulate,” but it’s always meant as a compliment. In reality, though, it’s a backhanded one.

Persuasive orators are actually kind of rare in this day and age--even among those elected to public office.

The US Senate these days isn't exactly the Roman Senate in terms of rhetoric. Case in point: John Kerry, whose stump speeches in the last campaign were less than Ciceronian. And even admirers of the current President wouldn't classify him as a skillful orator. Or his father before him, Mr. Vision Thing. For that matter, Eisenhower was criticized for his lack of rhetorical skills and his Vice President was also less than inspiring at the podium.

Camilla's cleavage

Her flashy necklace--a gift from Saudi royalty--and the dress she wore to show it off at the Philadelphia Academy of Music has raised some eyebrows.

"Doesn't she look awesome?" noted the governor of Pennsylvania, Edward Rendell, his eyes no doubt popping out of his head at the time. "I can see what he sees in her," added Rod Stewart, and, indeed, her low-cut Robinson Valentine gown made it easy for all of us to see what he sees in her.

...

Not everyone is sold on Camilla's new look, though. One fashion expert, who asked not to be named, said: "I don't think it's really on at that age to display crêpey cleavage. It's quite vulgar. There is a fine line between being a royal and a celebrity, and she has crossed it here."

So what do you think: Should Camilla's Belle Poitrine stay under wraps?

Just call me an arrogant slacker

I was never one for taking copious notes in class. And what's the deal with those people who highlight every other word in textbooks? So distracting. Anyway, the Obama Messiah Watch is a good idea.

Miscellany

An outsider's perspective: American high school.

Not-so-super powers.

WMD and others: Iraq War myths.

Beam me up, Scooter.

Heh.

A feature, not a bug

Iran sees Mutually Assured Destruction as a good thing, says Bernard Lewis.

"Ahmadinejad and his group clearly believe, and I don't doubt the sincerity of their belief, that we are now entering an apocalyptic age, which will result in the triumph of their messianic figure," Lewis said, referring to the twelfth Imam, Mahdi.

"Muslims, like Jews, believe that there are things you can do to hasten the messiah. M.A.D doesn't work with these people."

Dr. Zhivago, the CIA edition

A new book says the CIA paid to publish the Russian edition of the novel, which enabled author Boris Pasternak to win the Nobel Prize.

Pasternak had been nominated for the Nobel Prize for his poetry every year between 1946 and 1950. The novel, which after the Italian edition appeared in English and French, received almost universal acclaim abroad, rekindling interest in Pasternak as a potential laureate. In 1958, he was nominated again for the prize by the previous year's winner, the French writer Albert Camus.

But there was still no Russian-language edition of "Doctor Zhivago," and the Swedish Academy required that any work under consideration be submitted in its original language, Tolstoy said. Soon a Russian "Zhivago" appeared at the academy, bearing the name of Feltrinelli as publisher. But the Italian house had not printed it.

Via A&L Daily.

Someone I blogged about committed suicide this weekend

And my traffic has doubled in the past two days with people looking for more information about her. It's not hard to see why: She was a women's studies expert with a PhD in sociology who had been arrested for prostitution. Police alleged that she was working out of her suburban Maryland home.

My first blog post consisted of a snarky headline, a quote and a one-liner. It was a throwaway that I justified because she lived near me. And because I was interested in the intersection of feminism and prostitution. Well, it seemed half the state of Maryland wanted to hear more about her. My traffic went up. I got tons of comments and I began getting emails about her from people who claimed to know her. Nasty emails.

I didn't blog about the nasty emails. But I did post a few more times about the case. It turns out that a woman's right to "own her own body" had little to do with this woman's change of career--although that's kind of how she justified it to a reporter who interviewed her. Instead, a picture emerged of a life that was unraveling. She'd been fired from two universities. A second marriage fell apart amid allegations of domestic abuse. The police had been to her house 20 times over five years on a variety of complaints from neighbors.

And then she hanged herself a week before the trial. And hundreds of people are coming here for the latest news. And sending me links and pictures.

In the grand scheme of things, this blog isn't even an insignificant microbe. And her story won't put me on the map. But I won't post her name or link to stories about her in the media and in other blogs. I'm not trying to insert myself into the story here. She was arrested; I posted about it; so did many others. I certainly had nothing to do with her suicide. But--and I hope I don't sound like a self-righteous prig here--I'm not going to feed anyone's prurient interest about the case. Not anymore.

I just hope the woman has found some peace.

No, no, no!

Michael Barone:

George P. Bush will be eligible to run for president in 2012. Chelsea Clinton will be eligible to run for president in 2016. So will Jenna and Barbara Bush, who will turn 35 several days after the election. And Jeb Bush, who had a fine record in eight years as governor of Florida, will be younger in 2024 than John McCain will be in 2008 or Ronald Reagan was in 1984.

An Israeli soldier speaks about Lebanon

Michael Totten interviews a soldier who fought against Hezbollah last year.

MJT: The reason I ask what kind of targets you were marking is because the majority of people inside Lebanon think the Israelis were firing at civilians deliberately.

Eli: If you ask me what should have been done in the villages in Lebanon during this war, I think Israel wasn’t harsh enough. Now, I’m not right-wing, I’m not…I just think that if we are in a war…it’s like, if you play with fire, people get burned. There’s nothing you can do about it. These whole villages, they were empty, just filled with Hezbollah terrorists. They should have been totally wiped off the map. Except Israel left them standing. Many of our soldiers were killed because of that, so Israel wouldn’t be blamed after the war for war crimes and destroying civilian houses.

When they say that Israeli artillery was aimed at civilian targets, I can tell you a bit about how the artillery works. If I find a target in the middle of a village, like one house that I see that there are armed people going in, and I will aim artillery, heavy artillery, on it. Not Air Force, not like pin-pointed targets. Artillery will dispense rounds 100 meters from that target also. It’s not accurate. Anyway, even if a target is next to it, these houses were empty. No civilians were walking around South Lebanon. I know. I was in their villages. In their houses. Anyone who was there was definitely working for the Hezbollah or working as a Hezbollah fighter.

Miscellany

Scariest ideas in science.

Pittsburgh buries its history: Fort Pitt.

Tricked: Guy Burgess.

Rich guys, hot girls:" Natural selection speed date.

A bitch, but not unique: Judith Regan.

It's a little early in the day

To decide who the ultimate bad guys are in 24. Stefan Kanfer is glad this year's bad guys are Muslim terrorists.

he new season features radical Muslims as the bad guys. Not Presbyterians. Not animists. Not Shintoists. Not Buddhists. Not Seventh-day Adventists. Not Rosicrucians. No, the characters fighting the U.S. have thick Arabic or African accents, and they have no compunction about killing children, the unarmed, the innocent, the unsuspecting. CAIR has once again complained, but Fox seems uninterested in accommodating them this time out.

But with the reappearance of the man behind last season's plot--now identified as Jack Bauer's brother Graham--leads me to suspect that the Muslim terrorists may be pawns in a much larger scheme. I just hope "Big Oil" or "right-wing reactionaries" aren't the culprits.

My unsurprising pick for '08

Although, I wouldn't have gone for Gingrich as Veep.

You're Giuliani-Gingrich!


As Rudy Giuliani, you are possibly the American who benefited most from September 11th. While no one could say you are happy about this event, it turned your life from one of the worst to one of the best overnight. That terrible day made everyone forget your flaws and consider you a brave and heroic soul, even though you didn't even handle that day all that well.

You're a little older now, and are ready to bring your lacking management skills to bigger and better venues ... this time, without hair.

You select Newt Gingrich as your running mate so he can replace Dick Cheney at this post too.


Take the 2008 Presidential Ticket Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Via Jen.

RINO sightings

Are up at Searchlight Crusade.

Miscellany

Valley fashions: Silicon Valley.

Feet.

An electable conservative: Rudy.

Spunky septuagenarian: Unlikely hero.

Not kosher: Assraelis

You mean we weren't before?

Troops authorized to kill Iranian operatives in Iraq.

For more than a year, U.S. forces in Iraq have secretly detained dozens of suspected Iranian agents, holding them for three to four days at a time. The "catch and release" policy was designed to avoid escalating tensions with Iran and yet intimidate its emissaries. U.S. forces collected DNA samples from some of the Iranians without their knowledge, subjected others to retina scans, and fingerprinted and photographed all of them before letting them go.

Here I thought we were bringing the war on terror to the terrorists. Silly me.

Math is mean

A discussion amongst the innumerate.

I've come to realize that probably one reason I struggled with algebra, geometry et.al., was that it seemed to me that these were basically reactionary academic disciplines, useful for designing weaponry or potentially repressive computer technology, but not with any obvious humanistic or social positive uses.

If I'm wrong about this, I'd appreciate it if people could show me how this discipline can have progressive uses.

******************

I agree. The uses of mathematics are primarily to serve the elites and powerful within society. Thanks to mathematics, the United States was building rocket ships to collect pebbles on the moon while they had hundreds of millions of their own citizens at home starving to death. Mathematics is great for building nuclear war heads, weapons technology, software to line the pockets of millionaire fat cats, or creating non-sense to feed the bullshit rationale for junk sciences such as economics. But for the poor working family just trying to get by, mathematics has very little to offer.

Via Lisa.

The NSRC pledge

I signed. Will you?

If the United States Senate passes a resolution, non-binding or otherwise, that criticizes the commitment of additional troops to Iraq that General Petraeus has asked for and that the president has pledged, and if the Senate does so after the testimony of General Petraeus on January 23 that such a resolution will be an encouragement to the enemy, I will not contribute to any Republican senator who voted for the resolution. Further, if any Republican senator who votes for such a resolution is a candidate for re-election in 2008, I will not contribute to the National Republican Senatorial Committee unless the Chairman of that Committee, Senator Ensign, commits in writing that none of the funds of the NRSC will go to support the re-election of any senator supporting the non-binding resolution.

More here.

Static electricity

I'm covered in it: My hair's flying all over the place and my favorite warm, fuzzy robe--an essential item of clothing now that the weather's dipped below freezing--positively crackles every time I move. Seriously, if I could figure out how to hook myself up to my computer, I'd save a fortune in electric bills. The other day I was terrified when I had to fill up my gas tank that a spark from my supercharged self would blow up the gas station.

All of us chickenhawk neocon wingnuts

Love Mark Steyn's writings on the GWOT, but his pieces on theater and music may be even better. Like this one, about national anthems and "Waltzing Matilda."

The same rules of standard songwriting apply to patriotic music. First, be specific. “The Star-Spangled Banner” meets that test. So too, in fairness, does “La Marseillaise”. But, if you sit down to write a purpose-built national anthem, you wind up with something that sounds like it won second prize in a Write A National Anthem For Anywheristan competition. And there’s nothing that sounds like a first-prize winner.

With Australia, it’s especially unfair, as the country has one of the best catalogues of folk songs of anywhere on the planet. I’m always surprised at how many I learned from afar as a child: it’s not just that Oz occupied a particular place in the imperial imagination, but that that place had a very specific musical character, too.

Read the whole thing.

Miscellany

The future of history: Email.

Family circle: Photography.

Because I said so: Professional nags get people to exercise.

Patriotic terrorists: Today's useful idiots.

How to sell a really bad film.

Chamber of geezers

Average age of senators is 62.

The issue is increasingly relevant today, considering the current Senate's advanced age, particularly among its leaders. Byrd, Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii -- Numbers 1, 3 and 4, respectively, among the longest-serving senators -- have been in the Senate more than 40 years each. And each chairs an important committee at an age when most people are retired: Byrd holds the gavel at Appropriations, Kennedy, 74, at Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and Inouye, 82, at Commerce, Science and Transportation.

"People don't like to talk about age," said Boston University history professor Julian E. Zelizer. "It's not a political taboo, but a cultural one. We're respectful of the elderly." To raise the issue in a political context, Zelizer continued, is even more fraught with difficulty because any discussion of the office-holding elderly portends a conversation about that which is even more awkward -- mortality. The subject of death is especially acute in the Senate, "where individuals matter," as Zelizer diplomatically put it.

They're really interfering with natural selection here

New Jersey would outlaw using cellphones while bicycling. Apparently all of New Jersey's other problems have been solved.

In 2005, 784 people were killed, including 17 in New Jersey, and 45,000 were injured in bicycle crashes in the United States, accounting for 2 percent of traffic fatalities, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. An agency spokesman said no statistics are kept for crashes involving cell phones and bikes.

A sloth worthy of the name

Main Entry: sloth
Pronunciation: 'sloth, 'släth also 'slOth
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural sloths /with ths or [th]z/
Etymology: Middle English slouthe, from slow slow
1 a : disinclination to action or labor : INDOLENCE b : spiritual apathy and inactivity
2 : any of various slow-moving arboreal edentate mammals (genera Bradypus and Choloepus) that inhabit tropical forests of South and Central America, hang from the branches back downward, and feed on leaves, shoots, and fruits -- compare THREE-TOED SLOTH, TWO-TOED SLOTH

Scientists give up on sloth after three years.

The sloth, named Mats, was remanded to a zoo after consistently refusing to climb up and then back down a pole, as part of an experiment conducted by scientists at the University of Jena's Institute of Systematic Zoology and Evolutionary Biology.

Neither pounds of cucumbers nor plates of homemade spaghetti were appetizing enough to make Mats move.

"Mats obviously wanted absolutely nothing to do with furthering science," said Axel Burchardt, a university spokesman.

Thanks to Lisa.

Xtreme "Little House"

The publisher of the "Little House" series is ditching the old cover art and replacing it with pictures of models posing as the characters in the series.

"Girls might feel the Garth Williams art is too old-fashioned," says Tara Weikum, executive editor for the "Little House" series. "We wanted to convey the fact that these are action-packed. There were dust storms and locusts. And they had to build a cabin from scratch." (The new tag line: "Little House, Big Adventure.")

Publishers are altering cover art—often tied to anniversaries and movies—to appeal to kids weaned on videos and computer games. The thinking is that children are more likely to pick up "Charlotte's Web" with Dakota Fanning on it than with Williams's illustration of a girl and a pig, or Newbery winner "Bridge to Terabithia" with a scene from the Disney movie (in theaters next month). "A Wrinkle in Time" is getting two different new covers. "Purists are often upset. But this is also a way for publishers ... to beef up sales," says Diane Roback, children's editor for Publishers Weekly. "The book jackets we as adults are accustomed to seeing, and love from our childhood, may look musty and dusty to today's kids." Allison Edheimer, 9, wants the photo version of the "Little House" series. "I'd rather read something where I can picture the person," she says. Rachael Ross, 10, agrees: "I like seeing real people better than drawings," she says. "Drawings look sort of fake."

Kids these days.

I always liked the cover art because it was old-fashioned--it seemed to promise an entry into a different world. The new covers make it look as though the books are a tie in to an after-school special. Of course, it could be worse: The covers could feature scenes from the old TV show, which was an abomination.

His feelings are hurt

Jimmy Carter goes to Brandeis.

"This is the first time that I've ever been called a liar and a bigot and an anti-Semite and a coward and a plagiarist." Carter paused and squinted at the audience. "This has hurt me."

At the same time, he acknowledged, with a flash of his trademark smile, that he did not simply stumble into the title of his new book. "I can see it would precipitate some harsh feelings. I chose that title knowing that it would be provocative."

Brandeis wasn't particularly impressed.

Miscellany

Stupid writer tricks: Avoid them.

Gridlock among the preschool set.

Refusing to ask for directions almost killed him.

American Bloomsbury: Concord.

The seven best YouTubers.

He was a quiet man

Christopher Hitchens on the neighbors of accused kidnapper Michael J. Devlin, who, as is the custom, told reporters that he "kept to himself" after the missing Ben Ownby and Shawn Hornbeck were found living in his apartment.

That he was a quiet man who kept to himself is unsurprising, just as the honor student/cheerleader/mother of three/beloved grandmother is almost always the victim of a heinous crime, but Hitchens seems to feel that the neighbors should have noticed "their neighbor's uncanny ability to produce full-grown male children without having a woman on hand."

What exactly should they have done? Hitchens uses the infamous Kitty Genovese case, in which neighbors did nothing while listening to a woman being raped and killed, as an example of how neighbors shouldn't behave, but as he admits from his own personal experience, neighbors will generally respond when they hear someone screaming. If only to get them to shut up.

Before the Ben Ownby alert went out, how do you think police would have responded to calls about a weird guy living with a teenage boy? Shawn Hornbeck referred to Devlin as his father. And seeing a second teenager hanging around for a couple of days with the first guy isn't too unusual. Teenagers often have friends over. Plus, unless you're home all day looking out the window, who can keep track of the comings and goings of their neighbors? One day you might see two kids and the next day no one.

Case in point: Our "fishy" neighbors. The first guy came in a tomato red pickup truck with his computer and TV in the back and entered the first floor apartment. A couple days later, he came by with a woman and some furniture. They also had a dog, a Yorkie, which I had seen pickup truck guy--who's about 6'4" and weighs about 225--walking one morning while wearing a short purple bathrobe.

A few days after that, a whole passel of late-model BMWs with out-of-state plates were parked in the lot. I was sitting on the balcony with my son and his friend when yet another couple pulled up in yet another BMW and entered the apartment. My son's friend whispered: "There's something fishy about them." And we all speculated about how many people lived there and why would anyone live in an apartment if they owned all these BMWs, and various other matters. Eventually, we decided that two couples lived in the apartment--pickup truck guy and his woman friend and another, younger couple. The younger woman was pregnant.

About a week after that conversation, a huge moving van pulled up and the two couples began loading furniture into the van from the apartment. The van was there for hours--into the night. But they didn't move out. Again, we all speculated but came to no conclusion. It was just idle gossip.

All this coming and going occurred during the summer months when I frequently sit outside and note the comings and goings of my neighbors. As I was leaving the house today, though, pickup truck guy was pulling in to the parking lot and it dawned on me that the BMWs were no longer there and that he's the only occupant of the apartment that I've seen for months. I haven't seen the Yorkie lately, either.

I suppose it's possible that he chopped up everyone else and buried them in the BMWs somewhere, but until the police come looking for them, I'm not talking. And, if and when it's discovered that there was something fishy going on in that apartment, I'm gonna tell reporters that pickup truck guy was a quiet man who kept to himself.

It's the truth.

Why do we need a rebuttal of the SOTU?

I mean, regardless of which party you belong to, whoever's the president is still the president of all of us. According to Wikipedia, the other side's been rebutting since 1966. I'm pretty sure most people just change the channel before the other side comes on.

Anyway, I watched Webb last night. I wasn't going to, but I was too lazy to change the channel. He seemed OK--composed, well-spoken. Nothing exactly earth shattering, though. It's really not what the Democrats say after the speech that's important, but what they do regarding the president's proposals. And Webb was pretty short on specifics.

The problem with the address in general is its laundry list approach: It's boring. That said, I thought Bush did well. His opening about Nancy Pelosi was gracious--Nancy's facelift seems to settling nicely, BTW, and she looked good--and he seemed much more relaxed than he was during the surge speech. I liked his tax credit for health insurance, though apparently the Democrats won't even give it a hearing. I thought the foreign policy part was good. Now we just have to see what the Democrats do.

'It makes us happy just to look at him'

How Archie Leach became Cary Grant. He'd been in 20 movies before he became a star, Benjamin Schwarz, writes.

In middle age, Grant would write that in his youth he had lacked "daring and abandon," as well as "confidence and the courage to enjoy life." But now he abruptly came into his own. With his contract soon to expire at Paramount, he resolved to choose his own roles and shape his own career. In one of the gutsiest gambits in Hollywood history, he broke from the studio system, becoming the first freelance star in the modern era. He soon made Topper, a flat, "sophisticated" trifle, but one that made oodles of money and displayed Grant's heretofore unrevealed feel for light comedy. That same year, though, he also made The Awful Truth -- and seemingly from nowhere the Cary Grant persona gloriously appeared, fully formed. All at once there was the detached, distracted wit; the knowing charm; the arch self-mockery; the bemused awareness of his audience, with whom he was sharing a joke (a quality that made him simultaneously cool and warm); the perfectly timed stylized comedic movements—the cocked head, the double takes. And, not least, the good-natured ease combined with a genius for pitiless teasing (see the hilarious, similarly agonizing interrogations, in The Awful Truth and three years later in His Girl Friday, to which Grant's character subjects his former wife and her suitor -- the latter played on both occasions by that brilliant stooge Ralph Bellamy -- regarding their anticipated provincial home life).

See also Cary Grant's suit, about the remarkable outfit that Grant wore in North by Northwest.

Tomorrow is another day

I'm a moderate procrastinator, according to the survey linked to here. Of course, I may just be moderate in contrast to the other survey takers who are liable to be procrastinators.

“[I]t appears that procrastinators are using my procrastination test to procrastinate, somewhat skewing the results. There is a perverse irony in procrastinating by taking a procrastination test that appeals to people, like reading a time management book while you should be working.”

A room the size of a snooker table

Can be yours for £170,000.

Miscellany

Comprehensive collection of Jimmy Carter's errors.

Hidden epidemic: Meatlifting.

Programming language inventor or serial killer?

Regulating poppadums.

Typeprints, clickprints and writeprints: Digital fingerprints.

RINO sightings

Eric of Classical Values has a surrealistic sighting.

Three crises in one

Eric Cohen and Yuval Levin look at the American health care system and find that policymakers treat health care as one issue when really there are three problems to be addressed.

Three different “crises,” then, each of a different weight and character. The crisis of the uninsured, while surely a serious challenge, has often been overstated, especially on the Left, in an effort to promote more radical reforms than are necessary. The crisis of insured middle-class families has been misdiagnosed both by the Right, which sees it purely as a function of economic inefficiency, and by the Left, which sees it as an indictment of free-market medicine. And the crisis of Medicare has been vastly understated by everyone, in an effort to avoid taking the painful measures necessary to prevent catastrophe. In each case, a clearer understanding may help point the way to more reasonable reforms.

Interesting. Americans, it seems, have a vague generalized anxiety about the healthcare system even though a majority--89 percent--are satisfied with the quality of their care. And no one seems to be especially worried about the spiraling costs of Medicare.

I actually like the President's health care proposal

Jules Crittendon: The Speech George Bush Should Make Tuesday Night.

The disaster is that you, Congress and the American people, do not care to fight.

Faced with a fundamental challenge to our own security, to everything we believe in, to the world order to peace and security for which we and our parents fought so hard for so many years, you now want to pretend like none of these threats are real. You want to surrender to the evil I have been telling you about. An evil that, unchecked, can consume large parts of the world and threatens to usher in a dark age.

You didn’t like it when I talked about evil. Sounded too simple, too uncompromising, too moralistic. Too … biblical.

I don’t know what else you call people who fly passenger jets into office buildings; who rape women in front of their husbands and children, and execute their opponents in acid baths; who seek to spread tyrannical and archaic religious regimes that enslave women and stifle fundamental freedoms. Who want to dominate the world’s primary oil fields with nuclear weapons.

I call it evil. Works for me.

Sigh.

Anyone else feeling a sense of impending doom about Iraq?

How to deal with the Islamist menace

Christopher Hitchens favorably reviews Mark Steyn's book, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It and offers some suggestions of his own for dealing with the threat. I particularly liked this one:

An end to one-way multiculturalism and to the cultural masochism that goes with it. The Koran does not mandate the wearing of veils or genital mutilation, and until recently only those who apostasized from Islam faced the threat of punishment by death. Now, though, all manner of antisocial practices find themselves validated in the name of religion, and mullahs have begun to issue threats even against non-Muslims for criticism of Islam. This creeping Islamism must cease at once, and those responsible must feel the full weight of the law. Meanwhile, we should insist on reciprocity at all times. We should not allow a single Saudi dollar to pay for propaganda within the U.S., for example, until Saudi Arabia also permits Jewish and Christian and secular practices. No Wahhabi-printed Korans anywhere in our prison system. No Salafist imams in our armed forces.

Road map to terrorism

Palestinian Muslim converts to Judaism, then joins Islamic Jihad after his brother is killed by Israelis.

Ben-David re-entered the life of the Sawafta family in earnest when his brother was killed, according to Hafez Sawafta, Ben-David's father. Sawafta said he called his Jewish son the day his Islamic Jihad son was killed, and that Ben-David came to Tubas and stayed for three days to mourn the death.

When he returned to Israel, he decided to renounce Judaism and return to Islam, Sawafta said.

"He called me, and said he had officially become Muslim again in a ceremony at a mosque, and said he wanted to give up his Israeli citizenship," Sawafta told The Associated Press.

Get a different job

Muslim woman refuses to sell cigarettes, citing her religion.

When contacted by the News, the store's assistant manager, who refused to give her name, said: "It is true that Muslims can't sell cigarettes - I used to be Jehovah's Witness and I wouldn't on religious grounds either."

She said the customer should have realised the shop assistant was a Muslim, and would not sell her tobacco, because she was "sitting there in her full robes".

Asked why the store had someone who would not sell tobacco working behind the till, she said: "It is against the law to discriminate against people on religious grounds".

To add insult to injury, this anti-cigarette-selling Muslim is making it up as she goes along.

Asim Mumtaz, president of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association in Cambridge, said: "I don't think there is any basis for refusing to sell cigarettes.

"Islam, like most religions, is against anything that injures health or the body, but there is no ban on cigarettes or on smoking.

Aren't these the people, after all, who gave us the hookah?

Via Lileks.

Miscellany

Unfilmable novels.

Humble beginnings: Celebrities.

Superstars of Shabbat: Cantors.

Welfare for dictators: The UN.

Our worst ex-President: Guess who?

Apocalypse now

Theodore Dalrymple reviews A Time for Machetes by Jean Hatzfeld about the genocide in Rwanda.

In that slaughter, in the space of three months, neighbours killed without compunction those with whom they had been friendly all their lives, only because they were of the different, and reputedly opposing, ethnic designation. They used no high-tech means, only clubs and machetes. Women and children were not spared; husbands of mixed marriages killed wives, and vice versa. The participation of the general population in the slaughter was its most remarkable feature: usually in mass murder, it is the state that does the killing, or rather the state’s agents, since the state is an abstraction without an existence independent of those who work for it. Hatzfeld, the African correspondent of the French left-wing newspaper, Liberation, went to interview some of the perpetrators a few years after the genocide. They were friends who took part in the murder (if that is not too slight a word for it) of 50,000 of the 59,000 Tutsis who lived in their commune.

Read the whole thing; I can't do it justice here.

Pet peeve of the day

If you're gonna do a story about a house designed around a book-filled staircase, shouldn't you show at least one picture of said staircase? Annoying.

Pelosi's style

Lizette Alvarez likes Nancy's look.

During her first week on the job, Mrs. Pelosi clinched votes in the House on the minimum wage, financing for stem cell research and Medicare drug prices, drawing two veto threats (for research and drugs) from a notoriously veto-averse president.

And she did it looking preternaturally fresh, with a wardrobe that, while still subdued and overreliant on suits, has seldom spruced the halls of Congress. On Jan. 9, a Tuesday, she wore an impeccable black and white tweed skirt suit, with strong shoulders and the jacket nipped at the waist; on Wednesday, she draped a red shawl insouciantly around a red suit outside the White House; and on Thursday, she appeared in a mod, deep-blue velvet, slimming pantsuit.

I don't know about "preternaturally fresh"; Pelosi looks a little too taut in the face for my tastes. But, oh those pearls!

The union of fist and mind

Perry Anderson endeavors to explain Vladimir Putin's popularity in Russia.

Once installed in the presidency, Putin has cultivated two attributes that have given him an aura capable of outlasting it. The first is the image of firm, where necessary ruthless authority. Historically, the brutal imposition of order has been more often admired than feared in Russia. Rather than his portrait suffering from the shadow of the KGB, Putin has converted it into a halo of austere discipline. In what remains in many ways a macho society, toughness – prowess in judo and drops into criminal slang are part of Putin’s kit – continues to be valued, and not only by men: polls report that Putin’s most enthusiastic fans are often women. But there is another, less obvious side to his charisma. Part of his chilly magnetism is cultural. He is widely admired for his command of the language. Here, too, contrast is everything. Lenin was the last ruler of the country who could speak an educated Russian. Stalin’s Georgian accent was so thick he rarely risked speaking in public. Khrushchev’s vocabulary was crude and his grammar barbaric. Brezhnev could scarcely put two sentences together. Gorbachev spoke with a provincial southern accent. The less said of Yeltsin’s slurred diction the better. To hear a leader of the country capable once again of expressing himself with clarity, accuracy and fluency, in a more or less correct idiom, comes as music to many Russians.

Via A&L Daily.

Difficult people

Beware the Super-Agreeable. The whiner, sniper and complainer sound bad, but working with a Super-Agreeable with a soupçon of passive aggressiveness is sheer torture.

And that's all I'm going to say on the subject--except to add that I am not a Silent but Unresponsive. Oh no.

Miscellany

Shoe size-penis size conversion chart.

Confirmation bias: President Bush and the Grand Canyon.

Call for multiculti penance: Anglican angst.

Steven Seagal is ... Yada, yada, yada.

What I've learned: Jack Bauer.

You'll cheer for them--and you'll like it

Title IX takes on cheerleaders.

Whitney Point is one of 14 high schools in the Binghamton area that began sending cheerleaders to girls’ games in late November, after the mother of a female basketball player in Johnson City, N.Y., filed a discrimination complaint with the United States Department of Education. She said the lack of official sideline support made the girls seem like second-string, and violated Title IX’s promise of equal playing fields for both sexes.

But the ruling has left many people here and across the New York region booing, as dozens of schools have chosen to stop sending cheerleaders to away games, as part of an effort to squeeze all the home girls’ games into the cheerleading schedule.

Boys’ basketball boosters say something is missing in the stands at away games, cheerleaders resent not being able to meet their rivals on the road, and even female basketball players being hurrahed are unhappy.

If everyone is equally unhappy, that's a good thing, no?

'Crocodile-Dundee-meets-the-Olsen-twins'

Bindi Irwin, who's the new face of an Australian tourism campaign.

Look, I know Bindi lost her dad, and of course that was a terrible tragedy. A tragedy that I probably would have chosen to address via private grief, but the Irwins did everything for the cameras, so I guess it’s not surprising that they keep popping up on television screens around the world. It's the way this is used to relentlessly promote Bindi that I've got a problem with.

When John Lennon died, Yoko didn't hit the talk show circuit spruiking Sean's singing career. It just seems tasteless.

And come on, a few interviews is understandable, but Bindi’s addressing the National Press Club in Washington, for goodness’ sake. Why don’t we go the whole hog and make her UN Secretary-General while we’re at it?

Via Toby.

Only 30 pairs of shoes? Pikers!

Study: 32 percent of Australian women own between 26 and 50 pairs of shoes.

Conducted by American shoe guru Meghan Cleary for two online dating services, the survey found that 80 per cent of women would wear stilettos or strappy heels on a first date.

Of those surveyed, 66 per cent said buying shoes was better than eating chocolate, while almost half of the women surveyed said high heels were the best way to boost sex appeal. Black was the colour of choice for 60 per cent of women, while 16 per cent favoured red and 7 per cent pink.

The average American woman owns 30 pairs of shoes; the average man: 15. I'm pretty sure I own more than 30; certainly more if slippers are entered into the equation as I believe I own four pairs of slippers alone. And that's just off the top of my head.

My catalog card

Card catalog generator via Sheila.

Miscellany

Multitasking: Defrizz while out on the town.

Television firsts, via Lynn S.

Sic semper tyrannis: Unless it's Saddam Hussein.

The hollow man: TS Eliot.

Heavy handbag syndrome.

There he goes again

Jimmy Carter: Attacks upon Israeli civilians aren't terrorism.

Former President Jimmy Carter told the Arab news network Al- Jazeera that he does not consider Palestinian missile attacks on Israeli civilians -- a war crime and breach of human rights, according to the UN -- to be acts of terror.

In an interview to defend his book, Carter, apparently in an effort to not offend pro-Palestinian Muslim viewers of the program, stated that "I don't consider... I wasn't equating the Palestinian missiles with terrorism."

Carter went on to explain that other acts of Palestinian violence, like targeting civilians in bus bombings or children at schools, should not be committed because they make Palestinians look bad. Such acts, Carter explained, "create a rejection of the Palestinians among those who care about them. It turns the world away from sympathy and support for the Palestinian people."

You betcha

24: A neocon sex fantasy?

Via Ian.

You got a better idea?

Max Boot on the surge.

If everything goes right, large swathes of Baghdad could gradually be brought under control. Then American and Iraqi units could pursue a "spreading inkblot" strategy — another classic counterinsurgency concept — to increase the pacified zone outward.

Of course that's a big if. It may be that we still don't have enough troops to successfully carry out this strategy. It may be that we don't have the will to see it through. It may be that we don't have enough reliable Iraqi partners. But considering the massive investment we have already made in Iraq, and the lack of good alternatives, it seems worth one final effort to see if we can salvage something from this dire situation.

McJobs and McService

Former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card looks at a new book on fast food management, My Secret Life on the McJob by Jerry Newman.

To his surprise, Mr. Newman found that fast-food store managers differ in the way they operate: "How employees were treated was part of an individual store culture." Mr. Newman describes Toxic Managers who used sarcasm or disrespect toward workers. Mechanical Managers were just doing their job, "as if fast food was a slow death." On rare occasions Mr. Newman discovered Relationship Managers whose caring and kindness extended to workers even when they were not on the job. He defined Performance Managers as leaders who built relationships to serve as a "means to ensure performance."

I used to live close to what I can confidently call the worst Burger King in the world. Service was slow, employees were rude and they were always out of key products, like soda. Yes, soda. In the years that I lived there I could never get a milkshake as the machine was broken and they were out of chicken nuggets on more than one occasion, which was a problem as this was my son's meal of choice.

Now, I'm not a regular at Burger King, and I avoided this one when I could, but sometimes desperation sets in. Like the time I had to hurry home from work, drive my son to band rehearsal and then watch the band perform. We got out at around 11 pm and neither of us had eaten dinner. So on to the drive-through it was, only to discover that not only were they out of nuggets, but they had no soda of any description.

To complain was fruitless. Once in frustration, I yelled at the woman working the drive-through. Gladys was her name. After Gladys informed me that they were out of some item, then kept me waiting and was extremely nasty to me, I pointed to the little sign that said the store was managed by one Miriam Rodriguez and suggested to Gladys that I might give Miriam a call. She practically offered to dial the number for me as she assured me that Miriam really couldn't give a shit what I said.

As always happened after one of these little encounters, I would declare a boycott and stop going. But another round of band rehearsals or karate lessons would see us both exhausted and starving. And, figuring that fast food restaurants experience high turnover, I would head back to the worst Burger King in the world with the hope that things had changed. Always, however, Miriam Rodriguez was still on the job. And so was Gladys.

'If it feels good, buy it'

John Tierney looks at the brain's shopping center.

I will not try to justify my need for the mood clock, the “Dodgeball” DVD, the desk-clip lamp and the smoothie maker. I would rather pin these choices on two culprits.

The first was my nucleus accumbens, a region of the brain with dopamine receptors that are activated when you experience or anticipate something pleasant, like making money or drinking something tasty. In the experimental subjects at Stanford, this region was activated when they first saw pictures of things they wanted to buy. My nucleus accumbens just happened to respond more strongly than the typical subject’s, so what else could I do? If it feels good, buy it.

The other culprit — the main villain, really — was my insula. This region of the brain is activated when you smell something bad, see a disgusting picture or anticipate a painful shock. It was typically activated in the brains of the other shoppers when they saw a price that seemed too high. I’d like to think of my insula as particularly stoic, the strong, silent type, but he’s probably just an oblivious slob.

The winter sales have my nucleus accumbens buzzing this month, beginning with a $150 pair of shoes I got for $25, a $200 purse I got for $65 and a coat (pictured above in grey; mine is red) I got for $100, which retails for $300. All of these items had my brain saying "At this price you can't afford not to buy," although I don't actually need any of them.

Miscellany

Etymology and history.

We've come a long way: Growing up on the Lower East Side.

Pepsi diversity.

Web economy bullshit generator.

It's what you don't know that gets you: iPhone.

Life in prison for adulterers

A case of unintended consequences?

In a ruling sure to make philandering spouses squirm, Michigan's second-highest court says that anyone involved in an extramarital fling can be prosecuted for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punishable by up to life in prison.

"We cannot help but question whether the Legislature actually intended the result we reach here today," Judge William Murphy wrote in November for a unanimous Court of Appeals panel, "but we are curtailed by the language of the statute from reaching any other conclusion."

"Technically," he added, "any time a person engages in sexual penetration in an adulterous relationship, he or she is guilty of CSC I," the most serious sexual assault charge in Michigan's criminal code.

Die already, would you

Fidel Castro's condition worsens.

MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro is in "very grave" condition after three failed operations and complications from an intestinal infection, a Spanish newspaper said Tuesday.

The newspaper El Pais cited two unnamed sources from the Gregorio Maranon hospital in the Spanish capital of Madrid. The facility employs surgeon Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, who flew to Cuba in December to treat the 80-year-old Castro.

In a report published on its Web site, El Pais said: "A grave infection in the large intestine, at least three failed operations and various complications have left the Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro, laid up with a very grave prognosis."

Live from Fallujah

Blogger INDC Bill, embedded with the Marines.

Days later, looking at the twisted remains of dead insurgents lent stark perspective: this is what death looks like, this is how and where the fiery struggle ends. All that these people were - very much like the animated Iraqis milling about them - is gone, and only a broken husk remains. I forced myself to look at them, and despite my respect for life and the tangible gravity of the reminder about war's stakes, as well as the gruesome nature of their poses and and injuries, I remained oddly unmoved. Clinical. I'm not sure what to think about that, except an apathetic "fuck 'em, they're terrorists."

Once you've heard the first-hand stories and seen what terrorist insurgents are doing to both Americans and the people in this city, you might feel that way too. I don't know.

Read the whole thing.

Nuns and priests at the movies

Jordana, who's apparently suffering from a devastating case of Turner-Classic-Movies-deprivation syndrome, was tagged with a movie meme that left both her her and her tagger at a loss to come up with movie nuns and priests. Here's my contribution:

• Favorite movie with a religious theme: Black Narcissus--Deborah Kerr, who also played a nun in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, leads a group of Anglican nuns to build a mission in the Himalayas but the air is too thin up there. Gorgeous, gorgeous movie.
  
  
• Favorite movie nun: You can keep Julie Andrews. Audrey Hepburn in A Nun's story wins the movie nun title hands down. Sister Luke, who becomes a nun in order to work in a hospital in Africa, struggles with the vows of obedience and pride from the beginning. And then the Nazis come. Audrey is brilliant.
  
  
• Favorite movie priest: Has got to be Spencer Tracy's Father Flanagan in Boys Town. His motto: There's no such thing as a bad boy. Runners up: Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald in Going My Way.

Miscellany

Scientists reconstruct Dante's face.

Poor excuses.

Tour the Treasury: Video.

Keep 'em: Posh and Becks.

Presidential speeches: Tag cloud.

'I refuse to endanger the lives of my children in a house with less than four bathrooms'

America's growing obsession with bathrooms. And why not--if you have the money and space? But the best bathroom has got to be slide number 4, which was built about 90 years ago.

Makes me glad I don't have a girl

Kay Hymowitz on the new female exhibitionists.

Britney was following to its logical end what has become the first rule of contemporary American girlhood: to show that you are liberated, take it off. Liberty means responsibility . . . to disrobe. Paris Hilton, Britney's BFF (Best Friend Forever), taped her sexual escapades with an ex-boyfriend, though even she was tactful enough to pretend that she hadn't meant for the video to go public. Courtney Love, Lindsay Lohan and Tara Reid have also staged their own wardrobe malfunctions. But flashing is hardly limited to celebrities. The girls-next-door who migrate to Florida during spring break happily lift their blouses and snap their thongs for the producers of "Girls Gone Wild," who sell their DVDs to an eager public.

It would also behoove parents not to buy prepubescent girls thongs or allow their middle schoolers to perform bumps and grinds at school functions.

Countdown to "24"

I can't wait.

This new season of "24" taught me many things. Firstly, in the world of "24," Muslims have it pretty bad, as they're either terrorists or borderline Uncle Toms. But on the bright side, African-Americans have it pretty good on the racial ladder. Secondly, I learned that the entire national security apparatus talks in intense whispers, even when ordering takeout. And thirdly, regardless of whether you care to see a reflection of our nation in the mirror of one of its most popular dramas, explosions remain, as always, extremely cool. Will Jack Bauer deliver us from Armageddon? Or will the Republic fall into terrorist-inspired anarchy? Tune in, prepare to tune in again and again, and ask yourself: What have you done in the past 24 hours?

Boxer's seed gets no purchase in Condi's barren womb

Allah has the video of Boxer's attack on Rice's childlessness. Only Democratic women have the right to choose, I guess.

Hoist by his own petard

Fourteen resign from Carter center over book.

Board member Steve] Berman, who emerged as the resignation campaign spokesman, answered one question before it was asked. "It's fair to say," he said in an interview, that "most" of the people he contacted about the book were Jewish, as were the signatories of the resignation letter. "But that wasn't a subject that came up in our discussion."

He and the others who signed Thursday's letter say Carter went too far. "The thing that really disenchanted all of us--it broke our hearts--was to see the president abandon his traditional position of mediator, promoter of peace and honest broker [to become] an advocate for one side of the conflict."

I hate to break it to you, Steve, but Carter abandoned "his traditional position of mediator, promoter of peace and honest broker" a long time ago. In fact, it could be argued that he's always been an advocate for one side of the conflict. Still, better late than never.

RELATED: Has-beens attend peace conference.

In the UK, counselling replaces catching criminals

Alexander Chancellor suffered two burglaries recently.

So what do the police actually do in these situations? The main thing they do is to take a statement from the victim of the crime, which is obviously a good idea insofar as this records what actually happened, but less so in some of its other aspects. Why, for example, do the police need to know how tall I am? Or how old I am? Or how I earn my living? Or whether I am retired? Or where I was born? These are among the questions they are required to ask of all crime victims, though it is of the criminals that one yearns to know the answers.

One will probably never know, however, for the rigid bureaucratic rituals imposed on the police seem to stifle all initiative for catching burglars. High on their list of priorities is to offer "counselling" to victims of crime, whereas in most circumstances there could be nothing as comforting to them as bringing their persecutors to justice.

Of course, if he went after the intruders with a shotgun, he'd be arrested.

Via Clive Davis.

Miscellany

You park like an asshole, via Found on the web.

Happy birthday, Alexander Hamilton.

Introducing the burqini.

More than the ABCs: The chopstick test.

Own your own country: Sealand.

My nerd quotient

Pure Nerd 86 % Nerd, 13% Geek, 21% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd. The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful. Congratulations!

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

The surge and the speech

Bush looked and sounded awful, didn't he? That said, I don't know if a surge is the answer, but I very much want us to succeed in Iraq.

Victor Davis Hanson says a manpower shortage hasn't been the problem in Iraq: Tactics and strategy have been. He figures that if the surge is accompanied by a change in strategy then it'll have a chance to work.

The American people will support success and an effort to win, whatever the risks, but not stasis. We saw that with the silent approval of Ethiopia’s brutal rout of the Islamists in Somalia, and our own attack on al Qaeda there.

The subtext of the president’s speech was that our sacrifices to offer freedom and constitutional government are the only solution for the Middle East — but that our commitments are not open-ended if the Iraqis themselves don’t want success as much as we do.

But why believe that this latest gamble will work? One, things are by agreement coming to a head: this new strategy will work, or, given the current politics, nothing will. Two, the Iraqis in government know this time Sadr City and Baghdad are to be secured, or it is to be “see ya, wouldn’t want to be ya,” and they will be on planes to Dearborn.

The question is: Will the Democrats allow the President to move forward?

ADDED: 'Surge' debate a classic test of power of the purse.

Requiem for galoshes

Manolo laments the end of the overshoe. "Manolo asks, ubi sunt the clear plastic overshoes worn by the stylish ladies of the not-too-distant rainy past?"

I'd say I was born at the end of the era of the galosh. We wore galoshes as children and they were awful. It took forever to get the rubber boot up over your shoe and then there was a mighty struggle in the school cloakroom to get them back off. A friend would pull while you braced yourself by holding onto the bench. After much tugging, the galosh and the shoe it was protecting would come off and you had to spend another few minutes digging your shoe out from the galosh's rubber embrace. You had to take them off, because your feet would be swimming in a pool of sweat if you left them on. As I recall, my sister and I fought bitterly with my mother about wearing them.

Still, galoshes were the province of children and little old ladies, whom I remember wearing galoshes like the ones on the left. They also wore plastic rain caps. But no one else did. My mother, for example, didn't. And now that she qualifies as a little old lady she still doesn't. Galoshes went the way of decorative rubber bathing caps, which my mother did wear, but which didn't really keep your hairdo intact--their ostensible reason for being.

University of Michigan gives up on affirmative action

About time, too. But the university continues the fight in court.

It is important to emphasize that there remains uncertainty about how Proposal 2 will be interpreted and applied by the courts. However, because of the Sixth Circuit decision and in the absence of further guidance from the courts, we will proceed cautiously by adjusting our admissions and financial aid policies such that race and gender will have no effect on the decision-making process. We take these actions with regret, because we believe it would be fairer to applicants for us to wait until after the conclusion of the current cycle before making any changes.

Miscellany

Britons still love a good fry up.

Seattle wins: America's most literate cities.

Eeeuuuw! Implant auction.

Sweet and sour stamps.

Boil, freeze or fart: End of the world scenarios.

I always use my gift cards

Though I can't say the same about various gym memberships I've owned.

The financial-services research firm TowerGroup estimates that of the $80 billion spent on gift cards in 2006, roughly $8 billion will never be redeemed — “a bigger impact on consumers,” Tower notes, “than the combined total of both debit- and credit-card fraud.” A survey by Marketing Workshop Inc. found that only 30 percent of recipients use a gift card within a month of receiving it, while Consumer Reports estimates that 19 percent of the people who received a gift card in 2005 never used it.

Considering that two-thirds of all holiday shoppers in 2006 planned to give someone else a gift card, you most likely received one yourself in recent weeks. Perhaps you are among the exceptional minority, and you have already spent it, or soon will. But the odds say that it has instead wound up in your sock drawer.

This is a national scandal. One of the few joys of January is taking advantage of post-holiday sales with gift cards. I fondly remember one year when I raked in a complete set of dishes and a fur-trimmed coat for free. Other gift card bonanzas: A Cuisinart and an eleven-piece set of pots and pans.

Via Alex Tabarrok.

The most important meal of the day

Breakfast is the fastest growing sector in the fast food industry. And the competition is heating up. First McDonald's upgrades its coffee, then Starbucks introduces a McMuffin clone, an advance made possible by a super duper, high-heat oven.

In samples from around New York City last week, both the Starbucks sandwiches and Egg McMuffins offered the virtues of any good egg sandwich: the salty, savory contrast of soft egg, molten cheese and chewy bread. Both the ham and the sausage patty at Starbucks were meatier and less greasy than the meats at McDonald’s, and there was surprisingly little difference in the taste of the eggs — both had almost no flavor.

As the Starbucks sandwiches cooled, the texture changed noticeably (as is often the case with microwaved sandwiches), leaving tough bread and bacon, rubbery cheese and spongy egg.

“Starbucks is making a big bet on those ovens,” Mr. Miner said. About 20 percent of its stores now have the ovens. “They are not cheap, and it’s a big hulking thing to put on the counter, not to mention training your staff to use it.” At one Manhattan Starbucks last Friday, workers were so busy heating sandwiches that the store actually ran out of drip coffee.

Carlo Ponti dies

He was 94 and spent the last 50 years married to Sophia Loren, whom he discovered. Not a bad life. Here's a gushing, but fun, story on Sophia. It includes details on her romance with the great Cary Grant and her life as an illegitimate child in Naples.

Fashion frumps

Mr. Blackwell's worst dressed, via Drudge. Britney and Paris share the top honors.

There are high heels everywhere you look

In my podiatrist's office. There's a wind chime with high-heeled shoes dangling from it, a little knickknack shelf with ceramic high heels on display, posters of high heels and--in the examining room--a switchplate adorned with high-heeled shoes. I suppose it's natural that a man who deals with feet all day would have a shoe fetish, but isn't this display of high heels akin to a dentist displaying statuettes of Hershey's kisses?

Actually, in my dentist's office, when they move the chair so that you're looking at the ceiling, you're treated to an advertisement for Crest Whitestrips. I kid you not. It's right there on the ceiling with an exhortation to ask the dentist about them.

Me, me, me, me

Meme, stolen from RW, requires you guys to answer the questions.

1. Give me a nickname and explain why you picked it.

2. Am I lovable?

3. How long have you known me?

4. When and how did you first find my blog?

5. What was your first impression?

6. Do you still think that way about my blog now?

7. If I was an ice cream flavor, which would I be and why?

8. What makes me happy?

9. What makes me sad?

10. What song (if any) reminds you of me?

11. If you could give me anything what would it be?

12. Do you consider me a friend?

13. How often do you visit my blog?

14. Ever wanted to tell me something but couldn’t?

15. Would you make a move on me?

16. Describe me in one word.

17. Do you feel that you could talk to me about anything and I would listen?

18. What do you like most about me/my blog?

19. What do you dislike most about me/my blog?

Miscellany

"Spit with pride:" Wine tasting.

Brazilian backlash.

Mr. Tendentious: Norman Mailer.

100 years of modern art.

Diapers and drums: Celebrity patents.

Bahrain strips runner of citizenship

For running in an Israeli marathon.

Bahrain's Athletic Union said in a statement Saturday that it had received the news that a Bahraini national competed in Israel with "shock and regret."

"The union deeply regrets what the athlete has done," the statement said. A comity of sport and government authorities decided to strike Jawher's name off the sport union records and strip off his Bahraini nationality, the statement said.

Another quiz

How do you match up?

Regulating drug prices

Is a key part of the Dem's agenda, according to Doug Bandow.

Drugmakers are not beyond criticism, of course. But they should not be demonized. By any measure of social good, the pharmaceutical makers constitute one of America's most important industries. Their products save lives, heal diseases, and improve lives. Instead of targeting drug manufacturers, legislators should applaud them. Indeed, a political party that really cares for the sick, the disadvantaged, and the poor should appreciate the work of the pharmaceutical industry.

100 best companies to work for

Google is number one. Not surprising, given the perks.

Miscellany

She wants me/he's a pig: Mating.

Tech moguls who contribute to the GOP.

Boobathon: 100 years of breasts.

Ready for her closeup: Joan Crawford.

Concourse of hypocrisy: Bumper stickers.

Men and shoes

They just don't get it.

And they're not any cheaper

The Hatemongers go after the Geico lizard and other commercial spokespeople.

I always found the gecko rather tiring myself, but I contacted Geico anyway when I moved to Maryland and needed new car insurance. I mean, cheap is cheap, and who wants to pay more for insurance? But when I found out that not only would I not save 15 percent with Geico but that it indeed charged more than other carriers, I truly began to despise the little lizard with the cockney accent.

And that's the problem with advertising spokespeople: No one would ever buy a product strictly because they fell in love with the advertising icon and many such icons are annoying in the extreme.

My current bete noire is a woman who's featured on commercials for the RoomStore, a small chain that I'd never heard of until I moved here. Her tagline is something about fancy schmancy furniture stores and every time she says it, I want to reach into the TV and throttle her. Even if I were in the market for a hideous 8-piece living room suite featuring an overstuffed sectional couch and matching coffee and end tables, I wouldn't buy it there. I wouldn't take it for free.

I will always love you

Mark Steyn has a great piece on Whitney Houston's version of "I will always love you," which Saddam Hussein used as his campaign song during his last "election."

Whitney Houston had managed to transform a blameless country song into the mother of all power ballads. Within a year of its release, the number was every other Lite FM listener’s all-time favorite love song. The theory seemed to be that the louder you bellowed it the more romantic it got. In Britain, people began requesting it for funerals, which is marginally less ridiculous than, as many others did, requesting it for weddings – even though it’s a song about parting:

If I should stay
I would only be in your way
So I’ll go
But I know
I’ll think of you ev’ry step of the way…

Not exactly "for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health". But, by that stage, it was just the ultimate all-purpose romantic ballad, and the fact that doing it Whitney-style made it all but impossible for most folks to sing only added to its karaoke klassik status. It’s the archetype of the Houston-we-have-a-problem approach: a crazed melismatic pile-up in which the object seems to be to make the one-letter word “I” into a world-record polysyllable: “And I-I-I-I-I-I…”

As Steyn says: "Truly a terrifying Weapon of Mass Destruction." And you gotta ask: What is it about Whitney Houston and murderous Arab megalomaniacs?

RINO sightings

Are up at Diggers Realm.

Creatures from the wax museum

A wedding photographer inveighs against Photoshop abuse.

The images of celebrities on the covers of magazines are another source of irritation to me. In most cases the people responsible for creating them have used the Photoshop “heal” tool—or whatever it’s called; I’m not a Photoshop user—so aggressively to smooth away any inhomogeneity in their subjects’ skin that the women (it’s usually women) they depict might as well have been extruded from a rubber mould.

I hate the way the women on those covers look, particularly their skin. It no longer looks like skin. In this photo, for example, doesn't the before look much better than the after? She doesn't look like a living human being in the after. The same thing is true here. It's absolutely creepy.

Vincent Sardi Jr dies

The official end of an era.

Sardi’s shone brightest on the opening night of a Broadway show, and in the 1960s, a show opened nearly every night. The ritual never varied. In a line that stretched down 44th Street, theatergoers, theater insiders and celebrity watchers clamored for a table, hoping against hope to be seated on the first floor, where they could see cast members, producers and the playwright of the moment entering the restaurant after the curtain rang down. As the actors made their way to their tables, the diners would stand and applaud.

Once seated, the actors, producers and playwright would put on a brave face waiting for the reviews. The first 25 copies of The New York Times and The New York Herald Tribune were rushed over to Sardi’s from the printing presses at midnight, with the review pages marked. Mr. Sardi would man the telephone, taking calls from friends of the cast, ticket brokers and newspaper columnists eager to get a read on the fate of the new play. If the reviews were poor, a pall descended over the dining room, and diners would slink out the door. If the reviews were good, it was Champagne all around and a celebration until the wee hours.

Miscellany

Hooray for white folks: Movies.

A two-state solution via Allah.

Beards and 'borgs: Fashion trends.

Behnd the scenes at a celebrity tabloid.

Clamps?

I'm a 31

Which puts me somewhere between Jack Kemp and Bob Dole on the political quiz.

Via The Anchoress, who's a 25.

Food, glorious food

Tom Hager says the obesity epidemic is a big improvement over the mass starvation that was routinely predicted not all that long ago.

It was not that long ago that all the experts were predicting that our skyrocketing human population would soon outstrip its food supply, leading directly to mass famine. By now millions were supposed to be perishing from hunger every year. It was the old doom-and-gloom Malthusian mathematics at work: population shoots up geometrically while food production lags. It makes eminent sense. I grew up with Malthus's ideas brought up-to-date in apocalyptic books like The Population Bomb.

...

The underlying answer is this: There's a lot of cheap food around. Yes, walk into your local mega-grocery-emporium or just about any food-selling area anywhere in the world and stare the problem in the face. There's inexpensive, high-calorie food piled all over the place. Somehow we outsmarted Malthus. Food production has not only kept up with population growth but has managed somehow to outstrip it. There are ups and downs from year to year because of the weather, and there are pockets of starvation around the world (due not to a global lack of food, but to a lack of ways to transport it where it's needed). In general, silos are bursting. Tons of food gets plowed under the ground because there's so much of it farmers can't get the prices they want. Tons of cheap food (corn, for instance) is used to create more expensive food (like steak). Lots of food means lots of grease, and meat, and sugar, and calories. Lots of food means lots of overweight people.

Who is Barbara Walters' plastic surgeon?

He's clearly more than earning his keep. The woman's pushing 80 and she hasn't got a wrinkle. Look at that neck and chest.

While you were sleeping

Apparently there's been a run on self-help tapes that you listen to in your sleep.

The products with perhaps the broadest potential market, and often the most extravagant promises, are designed for so-called sleep learning. Professionals who think the boss has been a little slow with that promotion — and who have left their skepticism in their other briefcase — can try to kick-start their careers with the Wealth & Success Power Affirmations subliminal program (“start advertising to your own mind”). Sold through sleeplearning.com, it can be played through stereo pillow speakers available on the same Web site for $29.95.

Me, I'll stick to the tried and true method for achieving success: Sleeping with a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People under my pillow.

Miscellany

Filling jobs with algorithms: Google.

The Burger King chicken ripoff.

Art department madness: Book covers.

Usability in the movies, via GeekPress.

Ambassador of cookery: Jeane Kirkpatrick.

Stilettos and marital aids

The editors of The Oxford English Dictionary are asking the public to help them find the origins of several words.

The English language has 643,000 words, but the origins of some of our commonest phrases remain a matter of conjecture.

The dictionary’s editors think that they know which prat first caused a domestic after taking a bung, but they promise to perform a flip-flop if someone can prove that it is more than a shaggy dog tale.

In other words, they will revise the next edition of the OED if anyone can provide compelling and verifiable evidence of an alternative provenance of a word or phrase. Suggestions will be debated on the new series of Balderdash and Piffle, the BBC Two lexicology programme.

Here's the current entry for stiletto.

I'm a girl

And I like war movies.

Fairfax libraries react

By pointing out that the library has no dearth of classics on its shelves--and you can get them in a variety of formats.

Sample classic literature available in the Fairfax County Public Library:

Works of Aristotle by Aristotle -- 107 copies of various titles

Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner -- 99 copies on CD, cassette, large print and regular print

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway -- 108 copies on VHS, cassette and regular print

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee -- 359 copies on CD, cassette, DVD, VHS, large print, e-book and regular print

Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams -- 116 copies on VHS and regular print (including in some volumes of collected plays)

Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak -- 50 copies on CD, cassettes and regular print

That hasn't stopped John Miller from expanding a Corner post into a piece that laments the degeneration of libraries from cultural treasure houses to sleazy purveyors of mass market crap. BTW, Mr. Miller, the library catalog has 12 copies of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus available to anyone who's interested.

Libraries are, of course, competing with bookstores and online resources for patrons so there's plenty of room for debate about their role. This just isn't the story to peg the debate on.

(Thanks to commenter "Jack Bauer" for the pointer.)