PL pointed this one out:eBay item 2450501898 (Ends Jan-05-04 04:38:41 PST) - Aircraft carrier (deommissioned ) for sale

Victor Davis Hanson on NRO on The Western Disease.

Poor Man’s Hero-Controversial Swedish Libertarian Johan Norberg champions globalization as the best hope for the developing world.

Sites we've been looking at lately:
Longest Running TV Shows
NBC.com- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

It appears that I'm finally a terrorist suspect:
FBI urges police to watch for people carrying almanacs.

Nude, but not in Omaha.
USATODAY.com - Woman ticketed for appearing naked on Internet.

We saw this coming: OnStar=Big Brother.
This Car Can Talk. What It Says May Cause Concern. (NYT).

A NYT series of articles that examine trends for 2004: 2 Industries Converge: Media and Technology in 2004.

Virginia Postrel - Light Unto the Wealth of Nations:How Christmas displays illuminate a strong economy, in Reason.

Reason and Faith, Eternally Bound - NYT column mentioning our boys - Dawkins & Dennett in the good fight for Reason.

Bjorn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist, has been cleared of the ridiculous charges of "Scientific Dishonesty" brought by leftist "environmentalists".

Hunting Hussein Led U.S. to Insurgent Hub.

Victor Davis Hanson on War & Europe on National Review Online

Check out this 360 degrees panorama of Bryant-Denny stadium in Tuscaloosa the The University of Alabama.

Ten Ads America won't see.

Beagle spacecraft 'reaches Mars'.

Our intelligence people can't get everything, but this is a big one:
U.S.-Russia Team Seizes Uranium At Bulgaria Plant.

A little mad cow to liven up the holidays.

More Saddam speculation - Saddam was held by Kurdish forces, drugged and left for US troops.

A best list of "best of" listsFimoculous.com. I'm a sucker for lists.

From DEBKAfile, a site focusing on international terrorism, this observation - Indications Saddam Was Not in Hiding But a Captive.

Orson Scott Card - a scifi legend - explains how the Democratic presidential candidates and their mass media are trying to hurt America's war on terrorism for short term political gain. And he's a Democrat.

New York Film Critics Circle surprisingly gave its Best Picture award to Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King. That's a good sign, not that I ever had any doubt.

New Iraqi Leaders Confront Their Former Dictator - How differently it would have gone if he were questioning them.

Headline of the year: Saddam Hussein Captured Alive Near Tikrit.

I'm glad that there is so little for our government to worry about that they can focus on this: Nasty Language on Live TV Renews Old Debate (TechNews.com).

2004 Will Be the U.S.'S Best Year Economically in Last 20 Years, The Conference Board Reports in a Revised Forecast - It appears that the economy won't be the place for leftists to attack President Bush.

More on Bush & Space Revival:Dennis E. Powell on Space Exploration on National Review Online.

This is the most popular new personality quiz online - Spacefem.com: Your Color. I'm Yellow - ffff00.

I enjoy trying to keep up with the tinking of these guys - Edge: THE NEW HUMANISTS.

I can get annoyed with our government, but sometimes they get things right:
Bush Repeals Steel Tariffs and Return to Moon May Be on Agenda.

These are my people - Gravity and Chaos Club at Western Washington University.

An excellent Slate column about the THG obsession sweeping sports Needles and Pens - The sportswriter's obsession with steroid scandals.

The One - On ESPN2's chess championships, Garry Kasparov tries to stop the rise of the machines. - I saw some of this, it was fun. I must admit to pulling for 'man' in this one.

A column from August about Alabama's own Roy Moore by my favorite reformed English socialist - Moore's Law - The immorality of the Ten Commandments. By Christopher Hitchens.

The Onion is the funniest thing online - Mom Finds Out About Blog.

We may be CourtTV junkies, but I just can't see how this guy got off COURTTV.COM - TRIALS - Millionaire Durst acquitted of neighbor's murder.

At retroCRUSH it appears that the JLA & Avengers have actually faced off, after all these years.

From Ain't It Cool News a four-hour wrapup of Farscape is in the works. I really enjoyed the show, but its friday showtime clashed with football & I'd fall behind the complicated plots & then have to catch up. I'm fired up about the finale getting done.

(In a Dr. Phil accent) What you've got to do is get tough and stop expecting therapy to solve your problems - Telegraph | Arts | We need to pull ourselves together.

With the season slipping away for Alabama, it's time to be thinking about recruiting - TheInsidersRecruiting.com: Scout™ Database.

An informative column on why American's can't get good intelligence in Arabic countries by Spengler in the Asia Times.

More reality becoming cyberpunk - CDs 'could be history in five years' - storage media is the key people.

Along the lines of the copter game is:Albino Blacksheep - Flash / Defend Your Castle.

Since we've gooten Bellsouth Broadband recently I've been reacquainting my self with sites like - IFILM. There's a lot of entertainment value there.

Along those same lines, but more fun is this one - Which famous artist most reflects your personality? - Quizilla.

I took the Myers-Brigs personality test at SimilarMinds.com - Free Personality Tests and Community and came out a "Promoter". If: Bored, then: Give it a try.

Gadget may wreak traffic havoc it changes red lights to green. Gotta get one.

Machinima is a new art form combining video games, animation & filmmaking. It makes perfectly good sense. I've observed that video games are becoming more like movies, so why not just make them into movies. They had a film festival recently.

Victor Davis Hanson on National Review Online on the ongoing victory in Iraq.

PowerPoint Is Evil.
A case in point: The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation.

Gizmodo:USB air purifier and more OCD assistance with a hand-sterilizing mouse.

The Alabama Crimson Tide football team is having a tough year.
The 51-43 5OT loss to despicable Tennessee is the latest indignity.

Amazon.com: Search Inside the Book allows you to search the text of thousands of books. I'm in favor.

Carnivale - The Unofficial HBO Original Series Carnivàle Fan Website

One show that we do enjoy is on HBO: Carnivàle. It's odd, ominous and incredibly well-done. The best scripted show on television since the first season of the Sopranos.

NYT article about low TV ratings this fall. They can't understand why TV viewing is down. Maybe the shows are just awful.

We need a Space Elevator...now.

In addition to this, an excellent fan/link site: THE QUENTIN TARANTINO ARCHIVES.

I've been keeping an eye on the buildup for Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill". Here's somewhat negative review in the Guardian - So has Quentin just shot himself in the foot?

One of my favorite, Virginia Postrel (former editor of Reason) in the Atlantic.

Leni Riefenstahl is dead. She made Triumph of the Will and a documentary of the 1936 Olympics. She continued to claim she was never a Nazi. Saw an interesting film about her, The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, the other night.

A review of The Manchurian Candidate, movie & novel.

Our first game was vs. Hartselle, #5 in 5A. They have one of the state's top prospects, Nikita Stover, who has already committed to Alabama.
We were behind 14-0 with 4:00 left.
We won 20-14 in overtime.

School started today. I have 5 honors classes, so no real behavior headaches this year.

Austin Football began today. Two a days.
There will not be much free time from here on in.

Coaches retreat went well.
Played some EASports NCAA College Football 2004.
I need to regain my skills, didn't play up to RIG103 levels.

Will be gone to our preseason "coaches' retreat" until Thursday.
Stay out of trouble.

One of the best optical illusions I've seen: here.

A couple of tech sites I've found: Daily Rotation and Nanodot.

I've rounded up a few sites that are basically metablogs - summarizing the top links of other blogs: DayPop, Blogdex, Blogosphere.

I was motivated by this letter. It's from a U.S. Special Ops Colonel in Iraq and was posted on freerepublic.com - It Ain't Necessarily So.

Finally, some news from Iraq that cannot be spun by leftists - AP reports that "Saddam's Two Sons Were Killed in U.S. Raid" - FoxNews - Yahoo Full Coverage.

David Kelly was named by the BBC as the main source of a news report alleging the government exaggerated intelligence to strengthen the case for war in Iraq. He committed suicide.

Mike Price is back. He's suing Alabama for $20 million over his firing & Sports Illustrated for $20 million as well.

Whether he's guilty or not, Kobe Bryant has blown it.

The former roommate of missing Baylor University basketball player Patrick Dennehy has been charged Monday with murder.

A lot of scandal while we were at the coaching clinic:

Quentin Tarantino's long-awaited fourth film, Kill Bill, could be released in two parts. Finally...maybe.

I will be in Montgomery, AL from today through Saturday for The State Coaches' Clinic/All-Star Sports Week. I will be w/o easy internet access, so I may not post 'til Saturday night.

I mentioned Daniel C. Dennett's idea of calling people like us, who don't believe in the supernatural, Brights. Now he's got a column in the NYT on The Bright Stuff.

You don't have to be a nutty SUV-hater to like the 2300-mile American Solar Challenge along route 66. I love solar power. It's free!!

I am entertained by Ann Coulter. She is a leftist's nightmare - something that should not exist - an attractive woman who is a true-believing conservative who will not shut up and has no fear - she'll say anything to win an argument. Her latest bestseller, Treason, accuses the Democratic Party of being treasonous - since World War II. She has actually led some conservative/libertarians to question her on this one - (Frontpage.com, Andrew Sullivan). She doesn't care.

Reason magazine is great. This article on the anti-pleasure principle of nuts like the CSPI is a perfect example.

An essay in the Financial Times by the author of a new book about Stalin's "court". A few weeks ago we re-watched Inner Circle, an excellent film about the people around Stalin that addressed similar ideas.

U.S. Grant won the American Civil War.
There's little doubt that Beyonce's Grant's Tomb Dance was a bad idea.
But if there was no fighting going on, I don't think Grant would have been sober enough to care.

My principal Ed Nichols is the new assistant superintendent for personnel for Decatur City. I'm not happy about this. It's good for him, but I like him & am apprehensive about a new boss. I've got two more years to get tenure...

We talked about lifters last year. These "anti-gravity devices" are in the news again.

A Wired News article on Machinima - animated movies made with videogame 3-D software.

(in desperate gasping tones) Phone...line...was...cut. Must...blog...from...school.

Liberia? Where was I? Gotta catch up...

A friend from college, J.R., who spent his time altered, computing & recording songs has made his entire library available online (through the auspices of Poobie) - here.

Ed Lu, a NASA man on the Space Station, is sort of keeping a blog. Notice the picture with the best caption ever - "Godzilla is shown for scale".

Some cool fish, rare & new species, found in the Tasman Sea.

Baseball: It seems to me that Dontrelle Willis should have been on the NL All-star Team: rookie, 8-1 with a 2.13 ERA in 11 Major League starts, high leg kick, great attitude. He has said all the right things about being left off by Dusty Baker.

But in truth I find that the older I get, the less & less I care about the All-Star game. ESPN has eliminated the fact that I never saw AL guys except for every other Saturday & All-Star games. Who really cares anymore?

A review of Robert Harvey's new book, Comrades: the Rise and Fall of World Communism, in The Telegraph.

When government people who don't really know what they're doing or don't really care about Americans' privacy (i.e.- Total Information Awareness) tick off smart people who do know what they're doing, you get things like this - Government Information Awareness. Oh my... (in Wired).

I remember him as the king of the diving catch for the Crimson Tide. Now Joey Jones is one of the top coaches in Alabama High School Football. His Mountainbrook team beat us (Austin) in the 1st round of last year's playoffs. I talked to him before the game & he was particularly nice, considering the circumstances. He'll be at Alabama eventually, mark it down.

We've been discussing President Bush's hispanic federal court nominees today. Here's a semi-leftist column in the HoustonChronicle.com that actually outlines the issues involved.

Virginia Postrel discusses the lighting in Victoria's Secret & how Texas is legislating
against it. - D Magazine (Dallas/Ft. Worth).

Great column by Victor David Hanson at NRO about the American soldiers in Iraq & the amazing work they are doing with so very little support.

Michael Kinsley finally has a good idea - Abolish Marriage - Let's really get the government out of our bedrooms.

The New Cartoons on TNN - Gary the Rat (Kelsey Grammer), Ren & Stimpy (yes, it is), Stripperella (Pamela Anderson).

The new TNN knows the way to a guy's heart - Kansas City Star.

Following Toshiba's lead, NEC has unveiled a laptop computer that is powered by a fuel cell that uses methanol. Now wood alcohol will be good for something besides going blind.

A couple of new places to learn about gadgets:
Gizmodo:The gadgets weblog and Kevin Kelly's 'Recomendo'.

CRL just subjected me to one of the worst horror movies of all time -
Faust: Love of the Damned.

A really unsettling article in The Guardian about teenagers kidnapped by their parents & sent to a 'behavior modification center'. Couldn't you just whip 'em & ground 'em for a month?

P.J. O'Rourke, one of our favorite authors, reviews the junior senator from New York's new book. It sounds like it took six ghost writers to produce one of he most inane biographies of all time.

Katherine Hepburn dead at age 96. We have a softspot for crabby, independent people who don't have kids and tell people what they can do with themselves.

Sabine Herold, 21, has been called France's answer to Margaret Thatcher. From this Telegraph article she sounds like a true French libertarian. Oh my...
A picture of her at her group's website (in French of course)..

It appears tha Baghdad Bob/Comical Ali has resurfaced. I miss that guy.

Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D.-R.I.) carries on a family tradition (scroll to bottom).

Okay, the 20th Century is now officially over.
Strom Thurmond died Thursday. He was 100 years old.

Stop telemarketers dead (or near enough) - National Do Not Call Registry.

Glad to see MM's friends have been legalized by the Supreme Court. There are so many more important things to worry about than other people's private lives.

Got this one from boingboing - wreckedexotics.com - over 2,000 photos of wrecked exotic cars.

The NBA Draft was yesterday - a lot of foreign players & high school kids. Given the opportunity I'd draft college seniors (like the beloved Dallas Mavericks & the hated LA Lakers (1, 2) did). They've already been coached and can help right away, unlike these projects who can ditch you in three years anyway.

I thought the economy was in bad shape (according to Democrats):
Markets on course for global five-year high - Financial Times.

Apparently Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-MO) does not understand the concept of separation of powers within the American government.

Anthony Daniels reviews A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson in The Telegraph.

Ben Franklin & his kite. Reconsidered in The New Yorker.

Can a 'Danish-made transcranial magnetic stimulator' make you smarter? A wacky Australian scientist at the University of Sydney is trying to figure this out. - NYT (caveat emptor).

Top Ten ways the world might come to an end - from Wired.

Camille Paglia interviews Matt Drudge with Radar Magazine. A match made in internet-political-geek heaven.

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has proposed a new positive term for identifying people who are atheists, agnostics, humanists, free thinkers - those who have a world view that is free of supernaturalism and mysticism - Brights. A couple of websites that would be of interest to Brights - The Secular Web and the Celebrity Atheists List.

World Wide Words is the place for finding the origins of unusual phrases.

I'm embarrassed. I appear to have this psychosomatic ailment - leisure sickness.

The capture of the Ace of Diamonds - Abid Hamad Mahmud, one of Saddam's top aides, - has led to new reports that U.S. Forces may have killed Saddam Hussein & at least one of his sons.

More on Orrin Hatch being hoist with his own petard - Wired News.

Edge.org is the website of a group of scientists previously known as The Reality Club. Several scientists whose work we like are involved in this, including Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley, Daniel C. Dennett, and Richard Dawkins. They are the kind of scientists who move the human race forward with few people ever knowing about it.

New Russian Space tourism for only $20 million - Tourist-Class Soyuz Seats Open for International Space Station Trip
.

Orrin Hatch pt.2 - If you'll recall, the other day Senator Hatch suggested that the computers of people who download copyrighted material illegally should be remotely destroyed. It appears that Sen. Hatch's website site may have been made with unlicensed software. Oh my...

Ann Coulter pulls no punches and her latest comes out next week - TREASON: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism.

I may have discovered the greatest fansite of all time, just in time for the movie - The Hulk Library.

These Russian lesbian teenage pop stars, t.A.T.u., are a perfect example - who knew?

I mentioned the Lycos 50 yesterday as a place to check up on pop culture. Similar places are Google Zeitgeist, and Yahoo Buzz. I am essentially a misanthrope, but I've got to know what's going on.

I usually go to the Lycos50 for pop culture info & instead I found a new science history story - The Seashell on the Mountaintop: A Story of Science, Sainthood, and the Humble Genius Who Discovered a New History of the Earth by Alan Cutler. Nicolaus Steno (1638-1686) was the founder of geology and a scientific groundbreaker who was not supressed by the Church. We'll have to get this one.

Not to be outdone, the Red Chinese (I miss that) are preparing to send up astronauts (scroll down to June 16).

We're sending out new Mars probes!

Orrin Hatch, with whom I occasionally agree, seems to have completely lost it - "The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday he favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet." Oh my...

Missed yesterday - I had managed twelve straight. Better at least. I did "work" from 6:45am til almost 10pm yesterday, so I have a decent excuse.

These NASA guys have provided us with a list of cool robot projects. (/.)

Hypocrites everywhere - Massachusetts liberals, who pay lip-service (& checks) to environmental causes, are up in arms against a wind farm - in Nantucket Sound, which separates Cape Cod from Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. NIMBY. (Of course, this is from the NYT, so caveat emptor). (/.)

My dad came to visit today. I got to use a chainsaw on our fallen trees, probably the next best thing to an M-16. I cooked these 3" thick steaks he brought from Bannister's in Oxford, AL and we ate Pecan Pie. Plus, we got to hear my dad tell several great stories (so I come by it naturally).

Virginia Postrel in Wired - The Aesthetic Imperative: Why the creative shall inherit the economy.

NASA Targets Dec. 18 for Shuttle Launch Under New Rules - space.com.

160,000-year-old Fossilized Skulls From Ethiopia Are Oldest Modern Humans
- sciencedaily.com.

"Fighting squirrels is a very big part of what we do." - from Dave Barry.

David Brinkley is dead. There are very few like him.

CRL says to check out libertarian radio guy Neil Boortz.

This is a skunk. That is my driveway.
He's one of at least two skunks & two opossums who've dropped by in recent days. The food was theoretically for the feral cat who's probably our babies' daddy. We call him BD. The skunk's name, btw, is Mr. Pitch (from MST3K-521).

I've been reviewing and taking notes from the science fiction writers' guide - Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Science Fiction. One of the authors, Cory Doctorow, has written some short stories (1, 2) I've enjoyed. He writes on a group blog - Boing Boing.

While we may be unhappy with the French (okay, we've always hated the French), the demand for stinky, raw-milk cheese remains high. (from Arts & Letters Daily).

A comforting article - British Scientist Puts Odds for Apocalypse at 50-50. The stuff of scary sci-fi ...

Huntsville city councilman proposes to mimic NYC smoking ban. Restaurant & bar owners are worried. If we don't like something let's make it illegal. This renewed Puritanism is the element of the Republican Party that keeps me a pro-defense libertarian.

The reports of museum looting reported from Iraq were grossly exaggerated, in fact a hoax, and were a weak attempt to tarnish the American success.washpost, wsj, national geographic.

Three more weeks of summer school & then a little vacation. Woohoo!
Today was the first day of summer football workouts. It went well.
Carry on.

I'm ambivalent about Martha Stewart's plight. I like her mainly because so many people hate her (my usual contrariness). If she's guilty of insider trading then she should be tried like anybody else, but I suspect she's being singled out. I think at first a lot of the news media vilified her, but now there seems to be a movement to rise to her defense (SaveMartha.com). Maybe they found out she was a big contributor to Democratic candidates. She appreciates the support, gracefully of course.

I also watched the first 10 minutes of Austin Powers in Goldmember. Man it was awful. As CRL said, "It was a one-movie joke".

I've watched most of a couple of relatively recent 'sword & sorcery' movies - Kull the Conqueror with Kevin Sorbo (Hercules) and The Scorpion King with Dwayne Johnson (The Rock). They were both just awful. I guess it's a little much to expect all sci-fi to be Lord of the Rings or The Matrix, but the plots to these things are so simplistic that it's almost insulting. Oh well...

The new kittens turned 8 weeks this weekend. Here's an evening shot of them with their mom, Mrs. Doyle (her namesake). The darker orange one on the right is Penn and she will go to live with our friend Rush.

A couple of weeks ago two of our favorite movies finally came out on DVD. Both are Coen Brothers' movies - Miller's Crossing, one of my top 10 favorites of all time and Barton Fink, one of CRL's favorites (of course, we both like both).

Watched the end of a Joe Don Baker movie on MST3K this morning on SciFi. Even the later ones on SciFi with Mike (which I don't like as much as the early ones with Joel) are still funnier than 99% of anything. Episode List at Satellite News.

I still love to read Dilbert. I wait about a week and then read them all at once. Geek...

The New York Times has imploded while we were away: Editors resign, following the embarrassments of Rick Bragg & Jayson Blair. Just desserts for their anti-American coverage of the War in Iraq.

I'm teaching summer school. 7:45am-3:10pm with 8 kids who could not care less about US History since Reconstruction. We're just rocking along definitions, notes and a flurry of worksheets. An extra paycheck.

I found out about this fantasy/sci-fi writer Gene Wolfe by searching Amazon & other places & I'm reading Shadow & Claw: The First Half of the Book of the New Sun: The Shadow of the Torturer/the Claw of the Conciliator. I'm really enjoying this thing. It is so different from Martin & Jordan, in that it's one point-of-view and is in distant future Urth that is more like our past. It has a dense language and philosophical speculations that have been a nice change of pace. (turns out there's a GURPS worldbook).

I also have begun reading & taking notes on books on writing - starting with: The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile.

I've started some reading this spring & I've reread George R. R. Martin's three Song of Ice & Fire books and am waiting for the fourth.

In addition to spring football & fantasy baseball, we've got a new batch of kittens who turn 8 weeks tomorrow. See them here at four weeks. We won't have any kids, so this is a cute as we'll ever get around here.

When I've been online I've spent a lot of time "worrying" (as CRL says) over my espn.com fantasy baseball team - the GateTree Mockingbirds. As of today I'm 1/2 point out of first place.

One major reason for inactivity was spring football practice at Austin High School. I've become the running back coach and will actually be paid to coach this year (my 9th year coaching, 4th getting paid for it). In the spring game my side won the game 27-19. My backs on both teams did quite well.

Ok, I haven't posted in over a month. I will make my apologies to my reader(s) by posting what we have been up to for the last several weeks and links to the cool stuff I've seen.

A review of Matt Ridleys new book, Nature via Nurture, in The Guardian.

Ye Newe York Times - the Weekly Standard

The Onion - Christopher Hitchens forcibly removed from trailer park after drunken confrontation.

Weekly Standard humorist Larry Miller puts the Iraqi Museum hub bub in perspective.

This sounds like our best bet yet for privately-funded, manned space flight.
Scaled Composites, Inc. is chasing the $10 million X Prize.

A report on chemical weapons in Iraq - FoxNews, NYTimes.

"Democracy!, Whiskey!, Sexy!"
- a newly freed Iraqi with the right ideas - Najaf, Iraq - April 4, 2003.

The last couple of weeks has been quite an experience. We watched Saddam's soldiers in Baghdad & the rest of Iraq fold up like a cheap tent; We watched the Left implode as they could not not digest the success of George W. Bush, the American military & the United States; And we finally had indisputable evidence that CNN has indeed been the Compromised News Network all along.

Of course we had to watch tapes of Brit Hume and Fox News because floundering Charter Cable cannot seem to make the little blinking lights line up (or balance their books). Nonetheless this sweeping victory for the War on Terror, the Bush Doctrine, and the people of Iraq has the Leftists reeling, again.
I'll say it again - "Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!"

There was a flurry on the web and here's a recap of what we enjoyed most:
As usual James Taranto's Best of the Web at the Wall Street Journal was invaluable, as was the Weekly/Daily Standard. NewsMax.com was usually first with the controversial (meaning bad for the Left) stories.

CRL read and recommends: The War over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny and America's Mission by William Kristol & Lawrence F. Kaplan to explain what's going on with the Bush Doctrine.

Others we enjoyed this week:

Victor Hansen Davis had two good columns:
4/10 - Leftists imploding, 4/11 - Unprecedented in military history.

Andrew Sullivan kept us aprised of Leftists Imploding.

Compromised News Network's mea culpa.

I have enjoyed Hugh Hewitt's columns in the Daily Standard this week:
(4/10 - Liberals imploding, 4/15 - Compromised News Network).

Corrupted News Network by Gary Aldridge in NewsMax.com.

Order your copy of the Deck of Death.

In downtown Baghdad:
On one street, a white-haired man held up a poster of Saddam and beat it with his shoe. A younger man spat on the portrait, and several others launched kicks at the face of the Iraqi president.
"Come see, this is freedom. This is the criminal, this is the infidel," he said. "This is the destiny of every traitor. He killed millions of us."
-Fox News

Sign held by two Iraqis in downtown Baghdad, 4/9/03, shown on FoxNews/SkyNews,
"Go Home Human Shields, from Iraqis".

Music to my ears - Bagpipes play as Black Watch takes Basra.

Iraqui general seeks refuge, shares info - Times Online.

How should the U.S. administrate/govern post-war Iraq?
In Policy Review, Stanley Kurtz provides a blue print for Democratic Imperialism.
By way of - Arts & Letters Daily.

Blogging has been slow & I apologize to my reader(s?).

War Coverage
I constantly check FoxNews.com because they update frequently when action is fast moving. They have video from correspondents and a pro-American attitude.

I also check the Washington Times, which has more newspaperesque stories.

I look to NewsMax.com for news/commentary on stories that FoxNews won't speculate on, like the Marine commander who was removed for not moving fast enough, should France/UN not be involved in post-war reconstruction, and polls supporting this and further military action. And of course the NewsMax.com led boycott of France.

The Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web provides links to the best and worst war coverage each weekday. The Opinion Journal page is great, of course.

The best columns on the war are consistently being published by The Weekly Standard. Matt Labash's story about being in Kuwait/Iraq with P.J. O'Rourke/Christopher Hitchens is one of the best things I've read since the war began.

I've been finding the best links on the war at Wall Street Journal - Opinion Journal.

In violation of numerous United Nations resolutions, beginning with treaties that ended the Gulf War in 1991 and ending with UN Resolution 1441, Saddam Hussein posseses chemical and biological weapons and has been attempting to acquire nuclear weapons. For years he has supported anti-western terrorists. It does not take a genius to figure out that he could easily provide terrorists with Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) to use against the US and other nations. After the terrorists attacks of 9/11/01 the U.S. must take this threat seriously, and prevent it from happening. We must not simply wait and react to the next vicious attack. When you add this to the terror he has visited upon his own people for almost 30 years, this is not a difficult decision. Although no one sane desires war, a nation must be willing to go to war or submit to tyrrany. Some countries have decided that doing business with Hussein is the best way to avoid confronting him, no matter the danger he poses to the rest of the world. The U.S., led by President Bush, has shown uncommon resolve and is now bringing Hussein's reign of terror to an end. I will be watching on Fox News.

Dr. Steven Pinker, from the Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (and our favorite scientist), spoke to the President's Council on Bioethics about Human Nature and Its Future.

Daniel Dennett rips ideological scientists a new one(scientifically).

Not surprising. Anti-American idiots in California.

Talk about alternative energy sources - Electricity from cow manure. (more)

They're trying to change our college hometown (Tuscaloosa) yet again...good luck.

War on Terror update:
Terrorists are targeting Pearl Harbor.
Al-Qaeda military chief captured. more.

From the "You can't make this up dept.":
Human shields fear for safety; Many are leaving Iraq.

Segway hasn't quite changed the world. I still want one.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is rocking along. - CNN Money

In 1968 Robert Conquest upset the west by showing the Soviet Union was an evil murdering empire. The Left loudly denounced him. He was right (of course).

We recently got Daniel C. Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Amazon called it "One of the best descriptions of the nature and implications of Darwinian evolution ever written." Matt Ridley (author of Genome) reviews Dennett's new book - Freedom Evolves.

BarBQ in a southern culture mag. Description of Dreamland sparked my memory..

Article in The Washington Times about The Three Stooges. Nyuck, nyck.

Susan Lee explains the difference between conservatism and libertarianism in the Wall Street Journal.

NASA engineer's email warned of 'catastrophic' failure with tires on Columbia.

Larry Miller is a funny guy who's actually not a commie - in The Weekly Standard.

Residents challenge D.C.'s gun ban. - Wash Times

Armed Cuban border guards in Key West. - (from Dave Barry)

Happy 92nd President Reagan. Even the intelligentsia is beginning to recognize his greatness.

I ask again, "Is Europe still relevant?" - Anti-Americanism Moves to W. Europe's Political Mainstream.

Cyberpunk money, but from France?

Is Europe still relevant? - NATO rift.

Dude, you got busted.

Computers printed on paper in Business 2.0.

From the Blowing Things Up Dept.: Simultaneous Strategic Bombing Strike at Strategy Page. (from my friend Carey)

Cyberpunk invisibility cloaks.

Now Tuscaloosa will seem completely different when I visit.- CNN. (from Jeff R.)

Article on Space Shuttle tiles & insulation. - Wash Post.

It appears that Saddam's head bodyguard is in Israel revealing WoMD secrets - Herald Sun.

Great column on Columbia at GlennReynolds.com.

Space exploration continues; Russian cargo rocket blasts off for space station. - MercuryNews

"NASA chiefs 'repeatedly ignored' safety warnings" - Don Nelson, retired mission operations evaluator, in UK's Observer.

Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart this morning over Texas.

Tardblog. True, but not for the faint-hearted.

Richard Dawkins almost makes genetics entertaining.

For anyone who has had to sit through this sort of thing: If the Gettysburg address were butchered on PowerPoint.

Art historians continue to argue over Leonardo da Vinci.

At the UN, on Weds., Colin Powell will reveal intelligence info that clearly demonstrates Iraqis hiding weapons. - MSNBC

From the Onion - Skeptic Pitied.

Michael Kelly's latest column in the Wash. Post - "Marching with Stalinists" tells us who is really behind the "peace" marches and who they're marching with.
More of the same in National Review.
- (from my friend Jason G.)

Wash. Post - By a voice vote, the Senate voted to ban funding for the Total Information Awareness program. Excellent.

Innovation is inefficient. More often than not, it is undisciplined, contrarian, and iconoclastic. It nourishes itself with confusion and contradiction. This makes America the ideal place for innovation - Nicholas Negroponte.

Run Al, Run. (Sharpton, that is). Let's send him $20.

I actually learned something today - about The Golden Ratio.

"They" want to get at file-swappers through their ISP's. In the Inquirer - a brit tech mag.

In USA Today: Front-line troops disproportionately white, not black. Numbers refute long-held belief.

Show's we watched last monday: PTI with Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon.
Then Sportscenter and The Screensavers. Then on the History Channel we watched Mail Call and Peter Woodward's show Conquest.
A fine night of most of my favorite shows.

A few months ago I recommended Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist, a statistical inquiry into the claims of Wild Environmentalism, as a refutation of the Greens/Socialists. He has so upset them that a Danish committee has charged him with scientific dishonesty, but in the finest Stalinist tradition, they provided no evidence. Reason Magazine and The Economist try to explain. Lomborg replies.

Steve Wozniak was on Screensavers the other day. I like that guy. He made a pro-libertarian comment and showed off his Segway (which he'd brought in his Hummer). My kind of genius.

Berkeley mayor fined for stealing free papers. Unlike a certain high school principal.