Sunset with schooner.

The darkest picture was taken first. This is what happens when you aim the lens right into the sun:



Staring at the sun, I only noticed the overall compositions, the framing. But there, do you see what I didn't notice?



It's the schooner! Right there in the sun's reflection on the water. We've been talking about the schooner all day. And here it is, magically sailing in my sunset photos.

Your emotional blogger breaks down and cries.

And then I wonder, will my readers tire of all these sunset photos? Why aren't we enraptured by every sunset -- and every schooner?



Why, if we've tired of sunsets and schooners, do we still hope for eternal life?

"The best thing for Romney and Giuliani would be for the White House and Congress to halt the surge and agree on a phased withdrawal."

So says Peter Beinart, but wouldn't this actually be the best thing for the Democratic candidates? Here's the reasoning (which I don't get):

[W]hen asked about Iraq, [Romney and Giuliani] talk about terrorism... [T]hey emphasize their antiterrorism toughness while keeping their Iraq views fuzzy. This gives them room to embrace a significant troop withdrawal next year once they have their party's nomination in hand.

So far, the strategy has worked beautifully. But there's a problem. One way Romney and Giuliani have evaded clear answers on the surge is by delaying the question until September, when General David Petraeus will report on its progress. Now September is here. Petraeus will probably oppose any immediate troop withdrawal, deferring any drawdown until next spring. Bush and most conservative pundits will demand that the surge continue into 2008. And Romney and Giuliani will find it harder to bob and weave...

So, what will Romney and Giuliani do if forced to finally come clean? They'll back the surge. Romney is running as the conservative candidate, so he can't alienate Iraq hard-liners. Neither can Giuliani, given his tough-on-terrorism persona. But once they back the surge, they'll get a taste of what McCain has been experiencing all year. The more they're defined by support for the war, the more Bush's unpopularity will become their own, especially among independents, the people who have turned against McCain en masse. Backing the surge will instantly weaken them in the general election, because if they do eventually pivot in favor of some withdrawal, it will look like a flip-flop.

So, let's put aside the (very substantial) consideration that the surge might work and the (also very substantial) consideration that it is offensive to think of fighting the war in the way that would help one candidate or another. Let's assume that Bush decides in the near future to end the surge and begin withdrawing troops. That helps Romney and Giuliani? They are only helped if their opponents are not helped more. It seems to me that everyone who has been against the effort to win the war will claim triumph and express deep sadness that that Bush didn't listen to them sooner. Meanwhile, Romney and Giuliani -- in Beinart's scenario -- breathe a sigh of relief because they won't have to talk about Iraq anymore. But they will! They'll be called on their failure to demand an end to the war.

"I consider this not only a personal victory but a victory for all memoirists. I still maintain that the book is an entirely accurate memoir..."

Says Augusten Burroughs after settling the lawsuit brought by the psychiatrist's family he depicted in "Running with Scissors." The terms of the settlement?

[He] agreed to call the work a "book" instead of "memoirs," in the author's note - though it still will be described as a memoir on the cover and elsewhere - and to change the acknowledgments page in future editions to say that the Turcotte family's memories of events he describes "are different than my own." It will also express regret for "any unintentional harm" to them.

Howard Cooper, a lawyer for the family, said financial terms of the settlement are confidential.

They'd asked for $2 million and for a public retraction and a statement that the book is mostly fiction. I don't know how much, if any, money they got, but they obviously didn't get the statements they wanted out of Burroughs. So their memories are "different"? Their memories could be wrong.

In fact, his publisher has released a statement saying the book is "entirely accurate."

When I read the book, I assumed it was fictionalized -- though it was called a memoir -- because what Burroughs was describing was so horrible (and funny). I'm a little sorry to hear it's true, because I feel sorry for the poor boy. I hope he's found happiness in his art (and in his life).

"I consider this (settlement) not only a personal victory but a victory for all memoirists. I still maintain that the book is an entirely accurate memoir, and that it was not fictionalized or sensationalized in any way," Burroughs said. "I did not embellish or invent elements. We had a very strong case because I had the truth on my side."

In the publisher's statement, St. Martin's called the settlement "a complete vindication of the accuracy of the memoir."

But the Turcottes are also claiming vindication:

"With this settlement... we have achieved everything we set out to accomplish when we filed suit two years ago," the family said in the statement. "We have always maintained that the book is fictionalized and defamatory. This settlement is the most powerful vindication of those sentiments that we can imagine."

Considering the nature of the agreed-upon public statement, this belief sounds like pure fantasy. So these are the people whose memories differ from the author's? They're distorting right now, in plain view!

Amba seems to think Burroughs took more of a hit, and she's laughing at the idea of the genre called "book."

"The gossamer strands, slowly overtaking a lakefront peninsula, emit a fetid odor, perhaps from the dead insects entwined in the silk."

"The web whines with the sound of countless mosquitoes and flies trapped in its folds."

Millions of social spiders weave an ever-expanding web. Are you horrified, or do you think it's pretty cool?

A sailboat at dusk.

It looks sweetly out of place.



IN THE COMMENTS: The boat is a schooner, I'm told, though it might be a ketch.

MORE IN THE COMMENTS: A former crew member stops by to tell us it's the Pioneer. Some info:

The 102-foot, nineteenth-century Pioneer is a sleek but sturdy sailing vessel made of iron and steel (the only iron-hulled merchant ship still in existence, in fact) and topped by a pair of masts reaching 76 feet. Six days a week, the Pioneer shoves off from Pier 16, on the East River at Fulton Street, for a two-hour sail from the South Street Seaport around lower Manhattan. A volunteer crew from the seaport museum skippers the ship (the route varies), and there’s room for 35 passengers. Once you’re out from Pier 16, the motors are cut, the massive canvas sails catch the wind, and you’re clipping swiftly through New York Harbor the way generations of sailors have clipped before you.... Slip past haunting old Governor’s Island (with its empty barracks and Colonial houses), under the Brooklyn Bridge (opened just two years before the Pioneer was built), and around the Statue of Liberty.

And Knoxwhirled says the first photo is so blue it looks Photoshopped. The truth is, I tweak all my photos in iPhoto, but the only thing I did to that one is straighten it a tad. It really was that blue here last night. Then, I decided to tweak it. So, here. A newer and bluer schooner has been sighted in the vicinity of this blog:



ADDED: No one noticed the allusion. I'm surprised. Someone always notices....

In New York, there's always somebody making a movie...

And what I love about it is, it makes me feel completely free to take photographs of strangers.





Who are these people who are taking over the place and behaving like celebrities? They're obtruding on my environment, so I get to obtrude on them.

I've decided to use the word "obtrude" more, because I'm reading a book that keeps using the word. I don't really know why we Americans always say "intrude" instead of "obtrude," but I note that although both words contain the word "rude," "obtrude" sounds more rude. Something about "ob."

"After months of flirting, Thompson is almost in."

Strange sexual innuendo in a NYT headline.

And, so, anyway, Thompson is almost in. He'd better get in already, because talking about him not being in is getting annoying.

"Half of working Americans (49%) have suffered or witnessed workplace bullying."

According to a new Workplace Bullying Institute/Zogby Interactive survey. (There's a "Workplace Bullying Institute.") "Bullying" is defined as "including verbal abuse, job sabotage, abuse of authority or destruction of workplace relationships," experienced "now or sometime during their worklife."

I'm shocked, really shocked that half -- half! -- of America's workers lack the perceptiveness to notice any of the verbal abuse, job sabotage, abuse of authority or destruction of workplace relationships going on around them.

I'm not shocked, however, that the Director of the Workplace Bullying Institute, Dr. Gary Namie, declares "It's clearly a 'silent epidemic." Clearly!

When bullies are women, they choose other women as their prey in 71% of cases. Bullying, or status-blind harassment, is four (4) times more prevalent than illegal, civil rights, status-based harassment. Same-gender harassment defines the two most frequent categories of bullying. Gary Namie said, "It was legal when we started the movement in '98 and it still is today."

So what do you want then, Dr. Gary? A law so people can sue when they think anyone says anything mean at work or undercuts what they're trying to do around here? Would threatening to sue under that law about what that woman is trying to do to me give that woman a basis to sue me for bullying her? I'm picturing an infinite regression of counterclaims.

By the way, the Workplace Bullying Institute has an incredibly ugly, mid-90s-style website that utterly fails to express anti-bulling values. What do two waving flags -- not to mention all that clutter -- have to do with feeling comfortable in the workplace?

"The first thing I did was drop to my knees and say a little prayer... I owe a lot of people."

We talked about Kenneth Foster's case back here. Today, 7 hours before he was to be executed, Texas Governor Perry commuted his sentence:

Thursday's vote marked only the second time since Texas resumed carrying out executions in 1982 that the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles endorsed stopping an execution with so little time remaining. And in that 2004 case, Perry rejected the board's recommendation and the prisoner, who had been diagnosed as mentally ill, was executed.

Moxvox!

I'm moxvoxing tonight. Join us!

ADDED: Simulblogging being on the show. Currently, I'm on hold, but now I'm going on.

AND: I phased out during that long Ron Paul call.

AND: I got cut off. Trying to go back on!

NEXT DAY: Sorry for the dull simulblogging!

IN THE COMMENTS: Our regular commenter Beth objects to the line in the banner at Moxie's blog. ("An antidote to the mental illness known as 'liberalism.'") I defend Moxie on the ground that the line is meant to be humorous, and there's a lot of discussion about whether it's humorous, and Moxie comes by say that it is meant to be humorous and to coax Beth to a friendlier stance. (Is "stance" an unusable word this week?) Then Steve H. Graham drops in and says something impolite which is meant to piss off a feminist. Let's listen in to this after-midnight banter:

Steve H. Graham said...

Beth, honey, I think I know what you need. Some good hard lovin' from a meat-eating Republican he-man such as me. That is usually the problem when ladies act hysterical and/or hormonal.


Send a photo and I will decide if I can help you out.

12:08 AM

Beth said...

Meat-eating Steve,

I like my steak medium rare. But I bat for another team, so the rest of your generous offer must go unclaimed.

12:17 AM

Steve H. Graham said...

Beth, do not be so sure you are that type of girl. We thought my sister was that way, but it turned out she was merely outdoorsy.

My offer stands. And I do not mean anything crude by that.

12:41 AM

Beth said...

Steve, you may not know everything your sister gets up to outdoors.

1:21 AM

Palladian said...

Especially when sis goes camping in the Brokeback Valley, where the women go...

1:26 AM

Palladian said...

Oh, and Steve, I accept your offer of some of your raw, Republican meat. But I'm not as female as Beth, so... but who knows? You might just discover that you're more "that way" than "this way".

1:29 AM

Palladian said...

The preceding comments were meant to be humorous, by the way.

1:29 AM

New York noise/Madison noise.

There's some infernal machine grinding away at street level beneath my office. Is that always there, and am I just noticing it? Because, now that I'm noticing, it's a constant, distracting presence.

I'm telling myself it's no worse than when they crank up the lawnmowers on Bascom Hill under my UW office window....



Oh, no! Don't get homesick!

The thing is you know the lawn will get mowed and the lawnmowers will go away. But what is this noise?

I climb up up on my desk to try to get a look down to where the noise is coming from. I picture myself falling out the window, and I realize that if I did, everyone would check what I'd just been writing. Two suicide posts in the last 24 hours -- here and here -- not to mention the white hair, the diamond-encrusted skull, and the "concentration camps and skeletons." You'd all conclude I'd jumped. Damn it! Death and that on top of it.

I scramble off the desk and think about relocating to a café... a Starbucks... not an indie café like back home. I'm trying to adapt. I've accepted that it is necessary to pay for a T-Mobile WiFi subscription so a Starbucks can approximate one of my beloved free-WiFi indie coffeeshops.

But please, Brooklyn: approximate finishing mowing the lawn!

Why are we eating so much shrimp?

Shrimponomics. Not only are we eating a lot of shrimp, but we're concocting a lot of explanations for why we're eating shrimp.

Before reading the piece, let me just say that I think people think they should eat more fish, but they don't like fish, so they enlarge the concept to "seafood" and eat the one thing they like that isn't as expensive as the one thing in the category that they really like (lobster).

Reading Stephen D. Levitt's analysis:

Interestingly, women in general were only half as likely to give supply explanations as were men....

Oh, damn. Caught being a woman again!

Levitt thinks the answer is on the supply side:

I’m not exactly sure, but here is what I can glean from the Internet. A key factor is that prices have dropped sharply. According to this academic article, the real price of shrimp fell by about 50 percent between 1980 and 2002. When quantity rises and prices are falling, that has to mean that producers have figured out cheaper and better ways to produce shrimp. This article in Slate argues that there has been a revolution in shrimp farming. Demand factors may also be at work, but they don’t seem to be at the heart of the story.

Why don't they seem to be at the heart? Because Levitt is a man?

"He couldn't remember whether it had cost 10 or 15 million pounds to make."

Remember the diamond-encrusted skull, offered for sale at $100 million? Sold.

A diamond-encrusted platinum skull by artist Damien Hirst has been sold to an investment group for the asking price of $100 million, a spokeswoman for Hirst's London gallery White Cube said on Thursday....

The spokeswoman said she could give no more details of the buyer.

"Damien Hirst has retained a participation in the work -- he still owns a share of it -- in order that he can oversee a global tour of the work that is currently being planned," she added.

I'm skeptical. About the sale, I mean. What is this "investment group"? It sounds as though it's largely composed of Hirst himself. So he got the asking price, eh? Prove it.

"They want to pat themselves on the back for admitting large percentages of blacks..."

Michael Barone writes:

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has issued a report on racial preferences in law schools... [I]t finds that racial preferences for blacks actually reduce the number of blacks who become lawyers....

The report gives ammunition to those of us who have criticized [law school] administrators for preening self-righteousness. They want to pat themselves on the back for admitting large percentages of blacks but at the same time seem to have no interest at all in the percentage who actually graduate or pass the bar exam.

Barone knows enough to put the word "seem" there. He must know the law schools care deeply about the success of our graduates. But I understand his point. It's that if we really wanted the ends we care about, we ought to abandon the approach to admissions that the commission criticized.

But there is no "we" here. As Barone notes, the highest ranked law schools absorb much of the limited pool of minority applicants, and this affects the other law schools, which also want to admit minority students. The law schools are not all going to change at the same time, and we are are in competition with each other. If any school changes, others will look for ways to take advantage.

What really hurts Hillary about this Norman Hsu story.

Everyone is displaying that picture of her with him -- taken a year ago, before the image upgrade. But let's read the news -- for a change -- and not just look at the pictures:

Mr. Hsu had pleaded no contest to one count of grand theft and was facing up to three years in prison.

The travails of Mr. Hsu have proved an embarrassment for the Clinton campaign, which has strived to project an image of rectitude in its fund-raising and to dispel any lingering shadows of past episodes of tainted contributions.

Already, Mrs. Clinton’s opponents were busy trying to rekindle remembrances of the 1996 Democratic fund-raising scandals, in which Asian moneymen were accused of funneling suspect donations into Democratic coffers as President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore were running for re-election.

Some Clinton donors said yesterday that they did not expect the Hsu matter to hurt Mrs. Clinton unless a pattern of problematic fund-raising or compromised donors emerged, which would raise questions about the campaign’s vetting of donors.

Eh! I still say that photograph hurts the most.

"The New York Times editors think that the phrase 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' is in the Constitution..."

Oops! But if it's a living Constitution, surely, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have evolved there by now. Let's run with it! Possibly to things the NYT won't even like.

Now, what is this editorial position that needs LL&PH? Follow the logic. It begins with the realization that when the war is bad, the soldiers will go crazy:

As the Army’s suicide rate hits record levels in the Iraq war, there’s small wonder practically everyone in Congress wants to deal with the parallel emerging crisis of depressed veterans tempted to take their own lives. Everyone, that is, except Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma. He stands alone in blocking final passage of a suicide prevention bill in fear that the government’s record-keeping on troubled vets might somehow crimp their ability to purchase handguns.

Even the craven gun lobby should manage some shame over this absurd example of Second Amendment idolatry.

The House has unanimously approved a measure mandating the screening of all veterans for suicide risk, but Senator Coburn worries that veterans’ medical data might be appropriated by other agencies to deny that all-encompassing right to wield arms on the domestic front.

The senator’s office points to another bill near passage — prompted by the Virginia Tech gun massacre — that would encourage states to do a better job of listing mentally troubled individuals on the federal roll of risky gun purchasers. But tying these two measures together is itself evidence of defective reasoning, or at least scurrilous politicking. The Virginia Tech measure has nothing to do with veterans and affects only those Americans formally judged by a court to be mentally disturbed.

It is an eminently good thing that the anti-suicide measure would require medical specialists to keep track of veterans found to be high risks for suicide. But that’s to care for them as human beings, under that other constitutional right — to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Respect for the grave sacrifices by veterans requires the Senate to strike down the Coburn ploy and hurry this vital measure to President Bush.

Why stop at soldiers? Let's have the government come around and check on everyone's sanity and then track those of us who don't meet the standard! To show we care for them as human beings.

And you know, I think whoever wrote this overheated editorial -- it's full of "defective reasoning" -- is a little funny in the head. Respect for the grave responsibilities of the editors of great newspapers requires me to recommend that President Bush send medical specialists to test and keep track of them. (And bring the soma, because this is about your right to happiness.) If there is any absurd talk about the individual's right to be let alone, even the craven privacy lobby should manage some shame.

"If we had more role models like Helen Mirren and Emmylou Harris out there, more women would want gray hair."

Should women embrace the gray? That quote is from Anne Kreamer who wrote a whole book on the subject. Who reads such things? Oh, I think we know. And we know why they are published -- they are publicity magnets -- I say as I am magnetized into providing publicity.

“It feels deeply liberating to be off the treadmill of ‘Oh God, I have to get my roots done again,’” said Ms. Kreamer...

Women's liberation -- the physical, superficial kind. It's so 1970s.

[G]ray-haired celebrities [are few]. Those public figures with salt or peppered heads — George Clooney, Toni Morrison, Ms. Mirren, Anderson Cooper — tend to be preternaturally handsome people who play up their hair as a trademark feature....

In her book, Ms. Kreamer sets out to prove that an attractive noncelebrity can also remain alluring as she lets her ersatz brunette fade to gray.

The epiphany came when Ms. Kreamer, then 49, saw a photo of herself beside her teenage daughter and a gray-haired friend. She decided that they looked “real” while her dyed hair looked fraudulent.

Real? How far down that road are we going to travel?

“In one second, all my years of careful artifice, attempting to preserve what I thought of as a youthful look, were ripped away,” she writes. “All I saw was a kind of confused, schlubby middle-aged woman with hair dyed much too harshly.”

Get a better colorist! That's like becoming a nudist because you realize you have crappy clothes.

By the way, in my case, it's not a question of gray but pure white. (I always laugh when my enemies include in their attacks the lie that I bleach my hair. If I were a Yale law student, I'd sue them!) But I do occasionally think it would be interesting to see what it's like to go about with utterly white hair. It would change everything, wouldn't it? It might be an interesting bloggable, vloggable stunt. I should assign a dollar amount to it and urge PayPal contributions. Let's see: $50,000. Oh, don't balk! Kreamer is getting more than that for her scribblings.

For the annals of anorexia.

Keira Knightley. A great beauty has lost track of what beauty looks like, and that look on her face, which once would have seemed to reflect sly, knowing sexuality, now expresses -- at best -- wacky quirkiness.

Where is this woman?

I've been seeing a lot of anorexic women this year, both in Madison and New York City. I'm not talking about slender women who have dieted their way to the low end of normal, so that they look sharp and modern as their clothes hang so well on them. (Remember in "Some Like It Hot" when Marilyn Monroe expresses envy of Jack Lemmon's figure -- he's in drag -- because "clothes hang so well on you"?)

I'm talking about women who radiate ill health, who stalk about unsteadily, who make you think of concentration camps and skeletons. Their skin is withered and their arms and legs are weird shapes. This is an aesthetic that does not include the appearance of health. What does an inviting look from such a woman mean? Not join me in bed -- in the realm of life and fertility -- but join me in the grave.

Just a few museum photos.

Men look at art:



Women look at art:



Some people seek information. Some seek enlightenment. These guys were gathering decorating ideas.



I'm not assuming or stereotyping. I heard them talking about it.

I was at the Museum of Modern Art, taking photographs, like this man, who had what I thought was the most fascinating profile:

The new global warming message: eating meat is worse than driving.

Horrors! But didn't you know this already? And don't whine that this means you have to be a vegetarian. Animal rights folk are trying to make it look that way:

“You just cannot be a meat-eating environmentalist,” said Mr. Prescott, whose group also plans to send billboard-toting trucks to the Colorado Convention Center in Denver when Mr. Gore lectures there on Oct. 2. The billboards will feature a cartoon image of Mr. Gore eating a drumstick next to the tagline: “Too Chicken to Go Vegetarian? Meat Is the No. 1 Cause of Global Warming.”

But no one tells you to give up driving, only to drive less or drive a car that uses less gas. So eat meat less often and eat smaller portions.

Courtney Love warned Owen Wilson to stay away from...

When Courtney Love is telling you someone is dangerously, infectiously into drugs, that must really means something.

Anyway, I hope Owen Wilson gets the help he needs.

Here's the suicide scene from the great movie "The Royal Tenenbaums" (which Wilson co-wrote):

One week to wallow in Mac rumors.

The announcement of an announcement to be made September 5th. David Pogue collects the rumors. The one I want? It's so obvious: an ultra-light laptop.

"I intend to go to my office on the first day of classes and, if my way is barred, to engage in civil disobedience."

"If arrested, I'll go on a hunger strike. If released, I'll do it all over again. I'll fast in jail for as long as it takes." So says Paul Finkelstein, whose class "Equality in Social Justice" was canceled by DePaul University.

"Do you have cell phone face?"

Do you understand this sign? Is there some beauty treatment to wipe that annoying expression off your face?

ADDED: Enlarge.

"Shouldn't we stick up for the poor guy? I can't believe it's a crime to tap your foot on the bathroom to signal that you want to hook up..."

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Leona Helmsley's will... a design for discord.

Read it and shudder:

Helmsley left her beloved white Maltese, named Trouble, a $12 million trust fund, according to her will, which was made public Tuesday in surrogate court.

She also left millions for her brother, Alvin Rosenthal, who was named to care for Trouble in her absence, as well as two of four grandchildren from her late son Jay Panzirer -- so long as they visit their father's grave site once each calendar year.

Otherwise, she wrote, neither will get a penny of the $5 million she left for each.

Helmsley left nothing to two of Jay Panzirer's other children -- Craig and Meegan Panzirer -- for ''reasons that are known to them,'' she wrote.

It's not so bad that the dog got so much money. That's soft-headed flakiness that you could find a way to accept. But dividing four siblings into the two that win and the two that lose -- that, on top of the filthily rich and tauntingly named dog, is a design for discord. It's a flashy display of the love of trouble/Trouble.

Do Craig and Meegan really know the reasons? Or must they agonize for the rest of their lives about what the reasons are? If I were Craig/Meegan the very word "reasons" would torment me for the rest of my life. Reasons? Reasons?! Within a week, "reason" would equate with arbitrariness in my mind. Within the year, I would hate reason and turn to chaos for relief.

And what of the other two siblings? Will they give some of their take to Craig and Meegan? Or will they push them away with those supposedly well-known reasons? Reasons! You know the reasons. And all Craig and Meegan have is the grim insistence that the other two visit the father's grave or all is lost. Will Craig and Meegan visit the grave? Or will poor, entombed Dad only receive visits -- only once a year -- from the two children his mother saw fit to favor -- whose motive for the visit will never disaggregate from the desire to hang onto the money.

"HILLARY SUPPORTS NATIONAL SMOKING BAN..."

Screams Drudge. Click on the link. Does she want a national law making cigarettes illegal or just a national law against smoking in public? Nothing of the kind!

Asked at an Iowa forum on cancer whether banning smoking in public places would be good for America, Clinton replied, "Well, personally, I think so. And that's what a lot of local communities and states are starting to do."

So she has no proposal at all and when asked, she offered her "personal" opinion and then immediately referred to state and local government, which, presumably, she sees as the right level of government for this sort of thing. She then talked about how her state (New York) has adopted a ban and that it's worked out well, and when asked about a nationwide approach, she explicitly rejected it.

Drudge triggered our fear of the Hillary Nanny State. Maybe we should be hypersensitive about what's in store for us, but her statement was outstandingly mild.

Bonus video:



ADDED: The video -- a cigarette commercial -- makes such a phallic argument for smoking. And check out the look in the woman's eyes when she finally gets to smoke. It's a crazed look I've only ever seen from the False Maria in "Metropolis."

The best right-wing episodes of South Park.

Rightwingnews chooses, specifying the targets right-wingers delighted in seeing targeted: sexual harassment laws, lawyers, Scooby Doo, churches that complain about Halloween, white supremacists, red haired, freckled people, Michael Jackson, the idea that police target wealthy black men because of race, nanny reality shows, permissive parents, ski movies, condo sales, Puff Daddy: Vote Or Die!, Jar Jar Blinks, Memphis, the French, people who don't like big business, using children in political commercials, the movie "You got served," the rainforest, South America.

"What do you think about that?"

I'm sorry I didn't get the chance to weigh in on this yesterday, but everybody's talking about Senator Larry Craig. The story:

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) was arrested in June at a Minnesota airport by a plainclothes police officer investigating lewd conduct complaints in a men’s public restroom... On Aug. 8, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct...

After he was arrested, Craig, who is married, was taken to the Airport Police Operations Center to be interviewed about the lewd conduct incident, according to the police report. At one point during the interview, Craig handed the plainclothes sergeant who arrested him a business card that identified him as a U.S. Senator and said, “What do you think about that?” the report states....

What do I think about that? I think the fact that he did that suggests it works sometimes to get him off the hook. It certainly shows that he thinks it can and he's willing to use his power that way. He should resign for that alone.

[Sgt. Dave Karsnia, a plainclothes officer,] entered the bathroom at noon that day and about 13 minutes after taking a seat in a stall, he stated he could see “an older white male with grey hair standing outside my stall.”...

“I could see Craig look through the crack in the door from his position. Craig would look down at his hands, ‘fidget’ with his fingers, and then look through the crack into my stall again. Craig would repeat this cycle for about two minutes,” the report states.

Craig then entered the stall next to Karsnia’s and placed his roller bag against the front of the stall door.

“My experience has shown that individuals engaging in lewd conduct use their bags to block the view from the front of their stall,” Karsnia stated in his report. “From my seated position, I could observe the shoes and ankles of Craig seated to the left of me.”

Craig was wearing dress pants with black dress shoes.

“At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moves his foot closer to my foot. I moved my foot up and down slowly. While this was occurring, the male in the stall to my right was still present. I could hear several unknown persons in the restroom that appeared to use the restroom for its intended use. The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area,” the report states.

Craig then proceeded to swipe his hand under the stall divider several times, and Karsnia noted in his report that “I could ... see Craig had a gold ring on his ring finger as his hand was on my side of the stall divider.”

Karsnia then held his police identification down by the floor so that Craig could see it.

“With my left hand near the floor, I pointed towards the exit. Craig responded, ‘No!’ I again pointed towards the exit. Craig exited the stall with his roller bags without flushing the toilet. ... Craig said he would not go. I told Craig that he was under arrest, he had to go, and that I didn’t want to make a scene. Craig then left the restroom.”

What a sad, pathetic scene! It's awful that public bathrooms -- especially in places like airports -- are used for sexual activity. The police have to figure out how to drive this activity elsewhere. Karsnia has a tough job, but he seems to handle it with efficiency and as much dignity as you can when it involves sitting on a toilet and letting someone watch you through the crack in the door.

Craig has a difficult moral problem if, as it seems, he has a gay sexual orientation, but he has chosen to marry a woman. Cheating on his wife and obtruding on the bathroom-going public is no way to deal with his predicament. It's especially ugly if he's taking this miserable course in order to maintain his grip on political power with an electorate that wouldn't tolerate him if he lived his life openly and honestly.

Worst of all, to my mind, is the proffering of the business card and the "What do you think about that?"

UPDATE: I see Glenn Greenwald is attacking me about the Senator Craig story:

The reaction to the Larry Craig story provides one of the most vivid illustrations yet of how the right-wing movement works. Last October, just weeks before the midterm election, gay activist Mike Rogers reported that the married, GOP "family values" Senator repeatedly had sex with anonymous men in public bathrooms. His report was based on "extensive research," including interviews with several men whom Craig solicited for bathroom sex.

As Rogers argued at the time, the story was relevant -- just as the Vitter prostitute story was -- in light of Craig's frequent political exploitation of issues of sexual morality and his opposition to virtually every gay rights bill. Rogers' story, as a factual matter, seemed relatively credible, both because of his history of accurate outings and because there is no discernible reason why, if he were intent on fabricating, he would single out someone as obscure as Larry Craig, who was not even up for re-election....

Among right-wing pundits -- weeks before the election -- there was nothing but support for Craig and outrage over the reporting of this story. The most hysterical outrage of all was from Glenn Reynolds, who went so far as repeatedly to predict -- literally -- that the country would be so repulsed by Rogers' reporting that it might actually swing the election in favor of the Republicans. More absurdly still, Reynolds cited a grand total of two reasons why he voted for GOP's Bob Corker over Harold Ford in the Tennessee Senate race, one of which was actually Rogers' report on Craig ("the sexual McCarthyism from the pro-outing crowd . . . . has convinced me that [Democrats] just don't deserve a victory with those tactics").

As usual, Bush-supporting bloggers like Ann Althouse and Patterico dutifully echoed Reynolds' line: "I truly believe this sort of tactic is going to create a backlash."

So this is a link back to something I wrote in October 2006. I have to go back and check because I don't remember writing about Craig before. Here's the old post:

"Lefty Blogger Outs Senator As Gay."

Patterico notes. Captain Ed comments.

Kos is taking a poll. "Do you agree with outing Gay Republicans?" 70% say "yes. But don't you think this percentage would change if the strategy backfires? I think aggressive characters like our "lefty blogger" think that uncovering gay Republicans will disgust social conservatives and change their voting behavior. They might also believe that they are demonstrating hypocrisy and that doing so will motivate Republicans to abandon social conservatism. I would like to see Republicans abandon social conservatism, and I'm not cheering on these slimy outings. But, honestly, I think these creepy, gleeful efforts at outing will only make social conservatives more conservative, and they will continue to look to the Republican party to serve their needs.

Well, this isn't about Senator Craig or sex in public bathrooms. (And it doesn't link to Glenn Reynolds either.) This is about the general practice of outing gay Republicans, which I find offensive. Moreover, I didn't even say that I thought this would produce a backlash. I said that lefties wouldn't use this tactic if they didn't think it would stimulate homophobia and turn voters away from socially conservative Republicans. Of course, I am hoping the tactic backfires and that the voters are not really homophobic. This is a longstanding theme here, and Greenwald either can't understand it, won't take the time to see what I'm saying, or is deliberately misstating what I say in a low, sleazy attack. Which is it?

Let's see if Greenwald apologizes and corrects his post. Now that he can see how inaccurate and inappropriate his attack is, a failure to correct is outright deceit.

Also, Greenwald's post is incredibly boring and windy. Maybe he actually can't understand things that aren't blathered about at great length. Ugh!

NEXT DAY UPDATE: Over 300 comments, and I know some of them are abusive. I'm not able to comb through and delete, so I apologize to readers who find some of this offensive. Please try harder to argue with each other in a way that doesn't involve name-calling. And don't use the F word!

"Everyone thought he was doing a skit or something, but it ended up being real.""It looked like a Shakespeare act."

Descriptions of the man who stabbed a University of Colorado student in the neck. The student had ignored the man and walked by. Would you be more likely to ignore and walk by a real crazy man with a knife or an actor doing a Shakespeare routine?

"Obama knew he should vote for Roberts' confirmation, but voted against for purely political reasons."

Beldar reads the Washington Post and paraphrases.

Elsewhere on BeldarBlog -- where baiting Senators is a way of life -- Beldar is begging Senator Kerry to sue him:

I'll waive any statute of limitations defense. I'll waive service of process. Hell, I'll meet you at the federal courthouse doors for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division (you have diversity jurisdiction), and I'll even pay your filing fee!

I love the part about diversity jurisdiction. We need more blogging about jurisdiction....

The grand entrance to the state courthouse in Brooklyn.

Four arguments that this does not violate the Establishment Clause:

1. Old things carved in stone should be left alone.

2. It would take an outrageous, destructive act to get rid of it, and that would send a message of hostility toward religion.

3. It is aesthetically pleasing to elite tastes -- unlike that 2.6 ton block of granite Judge Roy Moore plunked in the courthouse lobby in Alabama.

4. Moses -- whom I initially perceived as ready to crack the little people over the head with the stone tablets -- is pointing at the ninth commandment. The ninth commandment is the prohibition against bearing false witness, and that's a solid rule for a courthouse.

On the other hand... it's not stuck around back where it looks like a fast food drive-up order box. You can't portray it as part of a collection of various monuments. It's right there by the door, conveying a strong message that this is the state's idea of what goes on here.

Gonzales resigns!

NYT reports.

MORE:

Mr. Gonzales's resignation is the latest in a series of high-level departures that has reshaped the end of Mr. Bush's second term. Karl Rove, another of Mr. Bush's close circle of aides from Texas, stepped down two weeks ago.

The official said that the decision was Mr. Gonzales's and that the president accepted it grudgingly. At the same time, the official acknowledged that the turmoil over his tenure as Attorney General had made continuing difficult.

"The unfair treatment that he's been on the receiving end of has been a distraction for the department," the official said.

Still trying to understand the Iraqis....

So they say they're going on vacation -- which looks awful to us -- and then... they reach the political agreement....

Sunset...

Downtown street collage.

Just some walls seen today.

“If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

Said King George III about George Washington:

The actual resignation of his command, having made peace between the civil and military powers of the new country -- and, in an emotional ceremony, bidden farewell to his officers on December 4, 1783 -- took place in Annapolis, Maryland, on December 23, when he formally handed back to Congress his commission as commander in chief, which they had given him in June 1775. He said he would never again hold public office. He had his horse waiting at the door, and he took the road to Mount Vernon the next day.

No one who knew Washington was surprised. Everyone else, in varying degrees, was astonished at this singular failure of the corruption of power to work. And, indeed, it was a rare moment in history. In London, George III qustioned the American-born painter Benjamin West what Washington would do now he had won the war. "Oh," said West, "they say he will return to his farm." "If he does that," said the king, "he will be the greatest man in the world."

This is from Paul Johnson's book about George Washington, which I was listening to today in audiobook form as I walked throught lower Manhattan. That last line made me break down and cry as I crossed Lafayette Street.

It was hot...

.. but not unbearable. I walked 3 miles to my destination, and I had a plan to take a cab back. But then I ended up just walking the whole way. I should have worn sunscreen. I shouldn't have worn sandals. And since it didn't rain after all, I was sorry I brought that umbrella, and that it was a really heavy golf umbrella. And I was almost sorry that I'd stopped at a store on Grand Street and bought 5 items of clothing. Buying the clothes was like a decision to take the cab. But then I didn't take the cab. Most of the way I had the shopping bag hooked on the end of the umbrella... in the style of those hobos in cartoons.

Ah, it was so much easier walking in than walking back...

New York was so crowded today...

... half the time you had to turn sideways just to go anywhere.

Oh no! That man!

He's wearing shorts!

ADDED CONTEXT:

Something to add to your "things to do before I die" list.

Impulsively buy a garish and unusual item of clothing from a street vendor... here, pick one...



... and then methodically arrange the rest of your wardrobe -- and possibly the rest of your life -- so that it fits with that item.

"Also, hate sex is especially hot... "

That's the first comment over at Volokh Conspiracy on a long, thoughtful post by Ilya Somin about whether "dating across ideological lines" is going to work.

In general, I am sympathetic to Kirchick's view that much of the reluctance to date across ideological lines stems from unjustified intolerance. However, I also have some reservations....

You get the tone of the post.

Partisans and ideologues routinely overestimate the extent to which political disagreements reflect differences in fundamental values rather than divergent evaluations of the best way to achieve the same or similar values.

Are we going to talk about the relationship like that? Forget the problem of dating someone who doesn't share you ideology. What about dating someone who doesn't share your rhetorical style?

Democrats punish Florida.

Shouldn't they be nicer to Florida?

"I understand how states crave to be first. I understand that they're envious of the role that Iowa and New Hampshire have traditionally played," said [Donna Brazile, a member of the rules committee], who was Al Gore's campaign manager in 2000. "The truth is, we had a process. . . . We're going to back these rules."

Though the DNC's action was well-telegraphed, it came after emotional pleas from state party leaders, who blamed the initial selection of the date on Republicans who control the legislature.

[Karen L. Thurman, chair of the Florida Democratic Party] said she and her staff spent "countless hours" trying to persuade the legislature to pick another date.

Jon Ausman, a DNC member from Florida, begged his colleagues to make an exception for Florida because of those efforts.

"We're asking you for mercy, not judgment," Ausman said.

Mercy?! Ha! Rules are rules!

"If the wife comes through as being too strong and too intelligent, it makes the husband look like a wimp."

So said Richard Nixon. He said that in 1992 -- I don't think "wimp" was a Nixon Era word -- when he was watching Hillary Clinton fighting for Bill.

These days, we're seeing a lot of the political wives, especially Elizabeth Edwards and Michelle Obama, but the issue isn't so much whether they are making their husband look wimpy, it's how they are being used, because they are women, to attack the female candidate. Supposedly, they can say things that might seem sexist coming from a man. But there's certainly something sexist about thinking Hillary belongs in a debate with the women! If Elizabeth and Michelle want to be such active debaters, let's see them have an argument with Bill.

"The more power Drudge has attained, the more reclusive he has become. Drudge seems to despise his own fame with a Kurt Cobain–like intensity."

Did you see this huge article in New York Magazine about Matt Drudge?

On radio he speaks of himself as a nobody and has referred to his fans as “psychic vampires.” He has utterly compartmentalized his life, separating the personal and the public. Acquaintances describe very brief, formal encounters, and even friends of Drudge’s, if there is such a category, generally communicate with him by IM....

Drudge enjoys the changing fashions in news, the plot shifts that he has a hand in engineering. As he’s entered middle age, something noir and futuristic has entered his sensibility, more Philip K. Dick (on his show, he often invokes Blade Runner) than Walter Winchell. The site is obsessed with global warming, with the dangers of cell phones and cloning, with all manner of tabloid horrors. He’s a storyteller, and the stories are dark....

The left hates Drudge for good reason; he has helped kill one Democratic presidential aspirant after another and has started in on John Edwards this season....

Republicans can’t count on Drudge. He praises Rosie O’Donnell and Michael Moore for their independence and fight, and seems to despise Giuliani and McCain....

Drudge has a sneaker for the woman he calls “the Senatress.” When Clinton started wheezing and coughing in a speech in New Orleans in May, Drudge expressed genuine concern for her. “Hillary, dear, take care of yourself. We need you. I need you personally … Take a few days off, what’s this frenetic pace?” He added admiringly, “She was professional. She kept going. She finished the speech.” After a left-wing listener IM’d Drudge to say he wanted Hillary to drop dead onstage, Drudge said, “I need Hillary Clinton. You don’t get it. I need to be part of her world. That’s my bank. Like Leo DiCaprio has the environment and Al Gore has the environment and Jimmy Carter has anti-Americanism … I have Hillary.”

Much more at the link -- including plenty of speculation about Drudge's sexuality.

"If certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism..."

What's the rule about talking about the way a terrorist attack might affect the presidential campaign? On Thursday, Hillary Clinton said:

It's a horrible prospect to ask yourself, 'What if? What if?' But if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world," she said.

"So I think I'm the best of the Democrats to deal with that as well," she concluded.

Of course, her Democratic opponents exploit this opportunity to attack her. The bland Senator Dodd said it was "tasteless." Senator Edwards calculated that the best thing to say is that we should never engage in "political calculation" when the subject is terrorism. They're concerned about America's vulnerability to attack, but they are also concerned with their own vulnerability to attack. They must realize that Clinton would be the stronger candidate for the Democratic Party if a terrorist attack occurs before the election. Since the party will have determined its nominee long before the election, there are many months when something might happen, and yet it will be too late to switch to a more hawkish nominee.

It's not really a question of whether it's calculating or in bad taste to talk about how a terrorist attack might affect the race. It's a question of which candidates see political advantage in asking voters to visualize the election under changed circumstances and which ones would like to soothe us into thinking only in terms of existing conditions. Clinton is prodding us to think about what a good candidate she will be in different situations that may develop over the lengthy campaign season. The others don't want to talk about that because they look worse in these imagined scenarios.

So here we see how Clinton has played a shrewder, more complex game all along. Doesn't this suggest not only that she will be a more capable candidate, but also that she will operate more effectively in foreign affairs if she becomes President? In this view, fretting about taste and calculation seems rather childish. I want a President who can calculate and is not afraid to say tough things at the right time.

Brooklyn sunrise.

6:13 a.m.



6:16 a.m.

Their heart grew cold...

(Two more photos from a walk Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.)

"The generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl."

"The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger colour is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl." So said the Ladies' Home Journal back in 1918, which makes Ben Goldacre wonder what the evolutionary biologists think they are doing when they figure out the genetic basis for the female preference for pink.

Here's the story he's reacting to.

"The explanation might date back to humans’ hunter-gatherer days, when women were the primary gatherers and would have benefited from an ability to home in on ripe, red fruits," Anya Hurlbert, who led the team of researchers, said. "Culture may exploit and compound this natural female preference."...

There is already evidence that human’s ability to see in colour is likely to have evolved because of the usefulness of being able to distinguish red fruits from green backgrounds.

The female role as gatherers while males hunted could have favoured a particular preference for reds and pinks, the scientists said.

Pinks are also involved in showing changes in emotional states, and might be picked up preferentially by women. "Again, females may have honed these adaptations for their roles as care-givers and 'empathisers'," the researchers said.

The great thing about this kind of speculation is that if the results were different, you'd be able to make up reasons why men and women evolved to prefer whatever they ended up preferring. As Goldacre writes, it's like "just so" stories.

For example, assume the study showed that men prefer stripes and women prefer polka dots or men prefer pastels and women prefer dark colors. Your assignment is to explain why evolution would produce that result. You know you can come up with something!

2 doors in DUMBO.

"Role-modeling what good families should look like."

That's one thing the presidency is about -- Michelle Obama says:



According to that standard, who are the 5 greatest Presidents and who are the 5 worst Presidents? This will take deeper knowledge of history than I can summon up right now, so help me out. I'm just going to guess that these lists have little relationship to the achievements of the various Presidents. But it is warm and pleasant to have a charming, conventional, devoted family snuggled up in the White House, and we don't like to picture any semen splattered about. That upsets us.

1. Read article about making life lists.

2. Blog about life lists article.

3. Compare life list to other sorts of to-do lists.

4. Decide they have some value, charm, and spiffiness.

5. Decline to make a life list.

Awakened by foghorns.

This is the view from the terrace right now:



This, you remember, was yesterday:

Homophobic anti-Giuliani ad.

Who is behind this?

Fox News article:

Zeroing in on concerns among some groups of gay voters, a YouTube.com video directed by a New York writer, theater director and part-time political activist takes aim at Rudy Giuliani and raises questions over the former mayor's support for gay Americans....

The purpose, says Ryan Davis, the director, is to point out what he calls the disconnect between what Giuliani has stood for in the past and what he is saying on the campaign trail. Davis, a gay Democrat, never has supported or worked for Giuliani (he worked for Howard Dean's presidential campaign in 2004), but he said at least he used to respect Giuliani's positions.

Giuliani was "over-the-top in support of gay rights, and then pulled back," Davis said.

What crap! Davis is a Democrat, interested in destroying Giuliani and showing his contempt for Republicans by revealing a despicable belief that they hate gay people and that their hatred can be stoked by images of actors behaving according to gay stereotypes. Decent Democrats should condemn Davis's video campaign, "Gays for Giuliani." It's blatantly homophobic. And I condemn Fox News as well, for reporting the story the way it did, illustrating it with a stock photograph of Giuliani in drag that lacks any sufficient connection to belong in a professional journalistic report on the video campaign.

Republicans should resist being baited by this sort of trash and should take note that Democrats are afraid of their front-runner -- afraid enough to deal in stereotypes that offend their values. Or are you going to tell me that Davis is an independent operative, doing his own thing? Then condemn him!

AND: Some people are saying they don't see how the ad is homophobic. Please. Picture an ad about Barack Obama with black actors behaving in an equivalent exaggerated racial style and going on about how much they love him for providing them with some benefit. It would obviously be racist.

Lower Cascadia, Hill and Dale, Lotusland, Groovy, and Reagan.

A proposal for dividing California into five states.

"The American people deserve to know that their presidency is not for sale. The Lincoln Bedroom is not for rent."

The sly new form for anti-Hillary campaigning. Don't name her. Just refer to something we'll understand, something that will stimulate us to think of the negative side of the Bill Clinton presidency. Set off that virulent thought process: We can't have the Clintons back in the White House.

This new example is from John Edwards. But he got the idea -- I think -- from Michelle Obama:

One of the things, the important aspects of this race is role modeling what good families should look like. And my view is that if you can't run your own house, you certainly can't run the White House.

That was extra-sly, because it was deniable that it referred to Hillary, which gave her not only the benefit of being able to deny it but the intense and ongoing press (and blog) coverage as everyone had to talk about it all the more.

Does it refer to Hillary? Let's explain -- over and over again -- what it would mean if it did refer to Hillary? Now, considering that it would mean that if it did refer to Hillary, do you think that she meant to refer to Hillary?

Oh, she meant it. And she meant us to do that, and for us to keep doing that for months. And we know we will.

CORRECTION: I apologize for the horrifying Freudian slip, now expunged!

"Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear."

Wrote Mother Teresa in letters to her confessor.

The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever — or, as the book's compiler and editor, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, writes, "neither in her heart or in the eucharist."

That absence seems to have started at almost precisely the time she began tending the poor and dying in Calcutta, and — except for a five-week break in 1959 — never abated. Although perpetually cheery in public, the Teresa of the letters lived in a state of deep and abiding spiritual pain. In more than 40 communications, many of which have never before been published, she bemoans the "dryness," "darkness," "loneliness" and "torture" she is undergoing. She compares the experience to hell and at one point says it has driven her to doubt the existence of heaven and even of God. She is acutely aware of the discrepancy between her inner state and her public demeanor. "The smile," she writes, is "a mask" or "a cloak that covers everything." Similarly, she wonders whether she is engaged in verbal deception. "I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God — tender, personal love," she remarks to an adviser. "If you were [there], you would have said, 'What hypocrisy.'" Says the Rev. James Martin, an editor at the Jesuit magazine America and the author of My Life with the Saints, a book that dealt with far briefer reports in 2003 of Teresa's doubts: "I've never read a saint's life where the saint has such an intense spiritual darkness. No one knew she was that tormented." Recalls Kolodiejchuk, Come Be My Light's editor: "I read one letter to the Sisters [of Teresa's Missionaries of Charity], and their mouths just dropped open. It will give a whole new dimension to the way people understand her."

Via Metafilter, where the comments include:

My view: Mother Teresa saw the reality of life more intimately than nearly anyone who has ever lived; she saw no kind and benevolent God because it doesn't exist. Kindness and benevolence comes from us, not an invisible superhero in the sky, and there wasn't much of it to be found toward her chosen charges....

[Another commenter:] In the hospital she ran, patients dying of cancer were offered aspirin instead of morphine and were told to offer up the pain to God. Dying patients were baptized regardless of what their religion was. Mother Teresa got a donation from one of the men involved in the Lloyd's of London mess and would not return it despite knowing that it was stolen money. Instead she told the victims to forgive the people responsible for the theft. She was fanatically opposed to birth control. She turned every donation her hospital got over to the Vatican - meanwhile, her hospital was criminally undersupplied. If Mother Teresa didn't believe in God anymore, what was her excuse for maintaining the Catholic line?...

[Another:] [A]s Hitchens documents, she didn't work selflessly for mankind. She was a sick, twisted suffering fetishist who raised millions of dollars that were split between building more places to die (and that's literal- the "shelters" she built are horrible hellholes) and the Vatican coffers and cavorted with dictators. She was a horrible individual, and her veneration is a symbol of all that's wrong with the Church and all that's wrong with modern humanity.

IN THE COMMENTS: Paddy O:

She didn't see God. But she saw God in others. And those others knew it.

Original Mike:

That she did what she did with all those inner doubts makes her all the more saintly.

"One reason blogging has been light is that I seem to be going through a period where I have no thoughts that aren't deadweight Conventional Wisdom."

Says Mickey Kaus, articulating a standard I agree with and then sneakily stating the opinion anyway.

I think Barack Obama's recent misstatements have revealed a potentially alarming lack of experience!

I'm getting tired of talking about Obama. He was on "The Daily Show," you know. Did you watch? I read this morning that he was on, and I actually took the trouble -- as I was making coffee -- to activate the Explorer 8000 -- here in Brooklyn, I don't have a TiVo, I have an Explorer 8000 -- and play last night's "Daily Show." But it turns out he wasn't on. He was on Wednesday night. I couldn't be bothered. If I don't even hear about it until Friday, how could he have done anything interesting on Wednesday?

Maybe we weren't meant to think about politics in August....

Foggy morning.

Feel free to talk about anything here. And give me some questions for a vlog. I promise not to let it go out-of-synch like last night's.

A nighttime hello from Brooklyn.

3 glamorous women found in Brooklyn.

High cheese.

Just a sign that amused me on Atlantic Avenue.

Should California switch to giving its electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins each congressional district?

Stephen Bainbridge starts a discussion about the new proposal. This is a very complex problem for Californians to think through. There's the notion that all the states ought to change, but since that's not on the table, face the real issue: Is it good for California, on its own, to change?

Here you have the biggest state, but one party is so clearly going to win that it makes no sense for a presidential candidate to cater to it. Nor should either party pick its nominee based on what Californians will like. Isn't that bad for California? But since the majority is Democratic in California, and the Democratic candidate currently has a lock on all 55 electoral votes, why should that Democratic majority vote for a change that will only cede some of those votes to the Republican candidate? The proposal looks doomed.

But wait. Even if most voters who vote Democratic care mainly about the party's dominance at the national level, all you need is for some of the voters who vote Democratic to care more about the candidates' paying attention to California. Add those votes to those of the Republican minority, and you could get to a majority for change.

The strongest reason for having a winner-take-all approach in any given state is that it makes winning that state highly valuable and induces the candidates to fight hard over those few voters in the middle who have the power to throw the whole pile of electoral votes one way or the other. But if the balance in the state isn't close enough, the candidates won't fight over it, even if the number of votes is high. That's California.

And here we see why you're never going to get all the states to change together. The winner-take-all approach makes sense for some of the states. Awarding the electoral votes proportionally would make some states very unimportant and would undercut the huge power currently enjoyed by a few big states like Ohio and Florida.

ADDED: No sooner do I post this than I see "Giuliani says he can carry California."

“I'm the only Republican candidate that can carry on a campaign in every single state, and we can be competitive in every single state"...

“If one of the others is nominated, there'll be no campaign in California. California will be conceded to the Democrats as it has been since Ronald Reagan.” (Former President George H.W. Bush did in fact carry California in 1988.)

Well, perhaps I like California in its winner-take-all position. It may moderate the Republican Party. And the Democratic lock on the state has not always been there. Maybe things really aren't that dysfunctional -- at least from the perspective of someone who likes Giuliani. Which might mean that more Democrats now ought to shift over to wanting the change.

Jeremy reads six chapters of "Discover Your Inner Economist"...

... hits the curb and kicks the book to the curb.

Apparently also, if you have a Ph.D. in economics, you can give whatever life advice and theories about human nature that you have and pass it off as manifesting economic expertise. Much of the book is about [Tyler] Cowen's vague ideas about the human need for "control." The last anecdote that made me decide I couldn't justify spending any more time with the book began...

"Maybe I should set aside $10 every week, which I get back at the end of the week if I don’t eat anything bad for me."

A Freakonomics diet idea. I like that idea, even at the low $10 level. It's not really enough to be paid for the amount of trouble, and since you're paying yourself, it's nothing. But little things like that can jostle you into behaving differently.

There's a big obesity forum at the link, with several authors. The $10 idea is from Havard econprof David Cutler.

Rasputin and Putin.

Roger von Oech is in St. Petersburg posing his Rasputin action figure at Rasputin's murder site:



And Vladimir Putin picked scenic Siberia as the place to pose his magnificent torso and move the world to awe and envy:

Right now, from my Brooklyn terrace.

"We have viewed $1,000 an hour as a possible vomit point for clients."

Seriously, how much can a lawyer charge an hour?

Here are the guys -- they're all guys -- who aren't cowering in the 900s anymore. They've cast off that fear of the fourth digit and demanded what they know they deserve.

IN THE COMMENTS: Ruth Anne writes:

Big deal. You charge $1000/hour for eating egg salad sandwiches.

$200 for 1 sandwich which took approximately 12 minutes = $1000 for a whole hour of egg salad sandwich eating.

That was funny... until I read the words "a whole hour of egg salad sandwich eating." Then, it was terrifying.

70 percent of viewers give up if they click on web video and a commercial starts.

According to research done by YouTube. Somebody tell CNN. YouTube has developed an alternative: "semitransparent 'overlay' ads at the bottom of selected video clips" (which either disappear after 10 seconds or launch if you click on them).

Things that seem profound and symbolic but actually aren't.

On Montague Street, a nun asked how to get to the Garden of Eden.

Outage.

Blogger had a little outage this morning. But it didn't last long and it'd been a long time since we'd had any problems, so don't try to pry me away from my beloved Blogger.

E-Harmony claims to produce 90 45 marriages a day.

So how good are your chances? Consider that it has 17 million users. About 0.2% a year. But some of those people aren't really trying, and most of them are not as easy to get along with as you.

CORRECTED: I read it as 90 marriages a day, but it says 90 members. Really, the success rate is pathetic!

Who's reading books?

We're told one in four adults didn't read a single book last year as if this is a shockingly low number, but I'm impressed that three in four did read a book. And why fuss over books? A lot of the books read are trash. (The linked article says the top picks were religion and and popular fiction.) And plenty of serious reading doesn't come in book form. Let's take a look at some of these "avid" -- that's always the word, "avid," unless it's "voracious" -- book readers:

"I go into another world when I read," said Charlotte Fuller, 64, a retired nurse from Seminole, Fla., who said she read 70 books in the last year. "I read so many sometimes I get the stories mixed up."...

Pollyann Baird, 84, a retired school librarian in Loveland, Colo., says J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter fantasy series is her favorite. But she has forced herself to not read the latest and final installment, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," because she has yet to file her income taxes this year due to an illness and worries that once she started the book, "I know I'd have to finish it."

Excuse me if I'm not impressed by the superiority of these avid book reader characters.

More women than men read every major category of books except for history and biography. Industry experts said that confirms their observation that men tend to prefer nonfiction.

Let me guess: Philosophy isn't a "major category." Nor is science. Or technology.

"Fiction just doesn't interest me," said Bob Ryan, 41, who works for a construction company in Guntersville, Ala. "If I'm going to get a story, I'll get a movie."

Going to the movies tends to be a social activity, and most movies are fiction. The notion that everyone ought to read novels is quite ridiculous. All these stories. You might get them mixed up.

Those likeliest to read religious books included older and married women, lower earners, minorities, lesser educated people, Southerners, rural residents, Republicans and conservatives.

A scurrilous group!

ADDED: Norm riffs:

[S]nce the 'typical person', according to the report, claims to have read four books, it would be interesting to know which books they didn't read.

Tracey Q. Pettigrew of Plains, Georgia, did not read The Magus by John Fowles

As I say, what is one to do? I do what I can, is all. And what I can do here is offer advice to the guy who says, 'I just get sleepy when I read.' This is my advice. First, don't read in bed before going to sleep if that is what happens to you; go to bed an hour earlier, wake up an hour earlier, and read for an hour before getting up. Second, if you sit down to read during the day, and feel sleepy, take a swift nap - 15 to 20 minutes - and read when you wake up. And third, don't bother with ... The Magus. Tracey is right.