The King of Pointland

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday, my brother.

A Nation of Red and Blue Pills (or: Zion and Babylon)

While in line behind a big white SUV, waiting to make a left turn into the crowded College Park shopping center, I decided to photograph the charmingly unironic stickers on his rear window (the other two were a Marine Corps sticker and a Terps sticker). Before I had a chance to get my camera out, the driver decided waiting in line was for suckers. He drove onto the curb, over the sidewalk, and then against the one-way arrow in order to snag a spot. By the time I found a space, he and his passenger were long gone, and I took the picture anyway.

Well Crafty

Slate has a fairly in-depth look at how guests are snookered onto Da Ali G Show.

VMTV2

MTV2:You can't make this stuff up. The trick is not to watch for months at a time, and then wait for the fun to begin.

Before I get to what I sat down to write about, let me share with you the following commercial, which I have paused on the TiVo so I can accurately transcribe it.

Here's the scene: Three young women are at the beach. Two of them, reclining, are wearing one-piece bathing suits. The third, a blonde in a blue bikini, walks up and sits down as her friend, in a red swimsuit, addresses her:

Friend 1: "You're wearing a bikini during your period?!?"
Blonde: "Yeah, why not?"
Friend 2: "How about cramps, bloating --"
Friend 1: "Yeah, aren't you tired?"
Blonde: "No, I took Midol!"

Off-screen voice: "Midol relieves cramps, plus bloating and fatigue. Tylenol and Advil can't do all that."

The friends are now walking down the beach:

Blonde: "I'd kill for a brownie."
Friend 1, sarcasticly: "Oh yeah, she's menstrual!"

The friends laugh. Fin.

You're welcome. By the way, this commercial, and the previous one I mentioned, are the inspiration for David's First Rule of MTV2: MTV2 is fueled by teenage menstruation.

The show I tuned into is called Video Mods. I'm sure the kids know about it, but peers, listen as I describe this hot new idea. It's video games meet music videos. It's obvious when you think about it, because the word "video" is in there twice. Here's how it works: some people, somewhere (at MTV perhaps), take your favorite music videos, and then make computer generated versions of those videos using characters and settings from your favorite video games!

For example, if you like the Stacy's Mom video, and if you also like the Sims 2, then you'll love the Sims 2 version of the Stacy's Mom video! Actually, it was a rather unimaginative scene-for-scene remake. But before that I very much enjoyed an original take on a juicy Missy Elliot ditty, set in SSX's hippie winter wonderland. Those snow boarders can dance.

Civilians

I suppose I'm not the first person to wonder what the news would look like if we were as concerned with Iraqi civilian fatalities as we are with those of American soldiers. Sometimes you do see a headline like this one, though. From a distance, I bet that camera looked a lot like an RPG launcher.

While you're visiting page one, check out this article about Putin's policies and the Chechen war.

Forgeries? II

This gets fairly detailed, but it's certainly possible the documents are not forgeries. Slate has a decent summary of the debate so far.

Forgeries?

It looks like the Texas Air National Guard memos CBS unveiled on 60 Minutes II are probably forgeries. There won't be a lack of coverage, but I found this bit interesting: "After doubts about the documents began circulating on the Internet yesterday morning, The Post contacted several independent experts who said they appeared to have been generated by a word processor."

Libertarians for Kerry?

The folks at the Cato Institute are not amused.

Into the Future

Today the CBO came out with updated deficit projections:

I suspect that chart will be in tomorrow's papers. But how many will publish this one?

Dream a Little Dream

This, from Oliver Sacks's recent piece in the New Yorker (sorry, not available on-line to the unwashed masses):

Sometimes, as one is falling asleep, there may be a massive, involuntary jerk-a myoclonic jerk-of the body. Though such jerks are generated by primitive parts of the brain stem (they are, so to speak, brain-stem reflexes), and as such are without any intrinsic meaning or motive, they may be given meaning and context, turned into acts, by an instantly improvised dream. Thus the jerk may be associated with a dream of tripping, or stepping over a precipice, lunging forward to catch a ball, and so on. Such dreams may be extremely vivid, and have several "scenes." Subjectively, they appear to start before the jerk, and yet presumably the entire dream mechanism is stimulated by the first, preconscious perception of the jerk. All of this elaborate restructuring of time occurs in a second or less.

Last night I had a dream. I was in an airport. In fact, it was Seattle Tacoma International Airport. One of the women behind the ticket counter was having some sort of problem with a male customer. What happened next isn't as clear. The female employee either released a biological agent into the airport, or pretended that she had, or maliciously raised the possibility that such an agent had already been released.

Everybody panicked. [ If you're interested, I can explain what recent real-world events prompted this part of the dream. ] It later became apparent that the germ only affected men. Before leaving the airport, all men were required to get vaccinated. After receiving my shot, as I walked to the exit, I rubbed my arm, and it tingled.

Soon thereafter I awoke. I could not feel or locate my right arm. I was not concerned; this has happened to me before. I put my left hand on my right shoulder and, working my way down my bicep, located the missing arm, pinned behind my head. I could feel the skin under my fingers but had absolutely no sensation from the arm itself. It might have belonged to somebody else.

What I find fascinating is that, when my arm grew numb as I slept, my brain concocted this entire airport bio-weapon dream to explain it. I wonder how long that took.

Dick and Zel

Fortunately, most Americans will read all of a story on page A25:

Miller and Cheney reached deep into Kerry's past to present him as a danger to Americans' security -- at times mischaracterizing the Democrat's positions in the process. "Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations," Miller said. Cheney, in turn, said Kerry "began his political career by saying he would like to see our troops deployed 'only at the directive of the United Nations.' " The vice president said, "Kerry denounces American action when other countries don't approve -- as if the whole object of our foreign policy were to please a few persistent critics."

Both men apparently were referring to a 1970 interview Kerry gave to the Harvard Crimson. In his speech accepting his party's nomination in July, Kerry said: "I will never give any nation or any institution a veto over our national security."

Miller portrayed Kerry as "an auctioneer selling off our national security." He recited a long list of weapons systems he said Kerry opposed. Miller's list was mostly derived from a single Kerry vote against a spending bill in 1991, rather than individual votes against particular systems. The bill was also opposed by five Republican senators at the time, and Cheney, who was defense secretary then, was demanding even deeper cuts in defense spending by Congress.

...

Miller also angrily denounced Kerry for saying the United States is occupying Iraq. "Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator," he said, later adding: "No one should dare to even think about being the commander in chief of this country if he doesn't believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home."

It was not immediately clear what Miller was referring to, although Bush himself has spoken of Iraq as being "occupied."

In addition to the Bad and the Ugly

Friends, Americans, Countrymen: don't go to Canada. Look, it's not all bad. Read on for some encouraging items from today's news.

Last year, in a well publicized terrorism case, the U.S. Government successfully convicted three Moroccan immigrants. But, having determined its own prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense, the Justice Department is now asking the judge to overturn the conviction. Prosecutorial misconduct is nothing to be proud of, but the self-correction is.

In other good news, a federal judge shot down an attempt, by a company that manufactures garage door openers, to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to prevent a rival from making compatible devices. The judge said:

The DMCA does not create a new property right for copyright owners. Nor, for that matter, does it divest the public of the property rights that the Copyright Act has long granted to the public. The anticircumvention and anti-trafficking provisions of the DMCA create new grounds of liability. A copyright owner seeking to impose liability on an accused circumventor must demonstrate a reasonable relationship between the circumvention at issue and a use relating to a property right for which the Copyright Act permits the copyright owner to withhold authorization-as well as notice that authorization was withheld. A copyright owner seeking to impose liability on an accused trafficker must demonstrate that the trafficker's device enables either copyright infringement or a prohibited circumvention. Here, the District Court correctly ruled that Chamberlain pled no connection between unauthorized use of its copyrighted software and Skylink's accused transmitter. This connection is critical to sustaining a cause of action under the DMCA. We therefore affirm the District Court's summary judgment in favor of Skylink.

Sadly, it's not all peaches and peach pie. I forced myself to watch Dick Cheney open his peach pie hole at the Republican Convention. A few of my favorite items:

• "CHENEY: Our nation has the best health care in the world and President Bush is making it more affordable and accessible to all Americans. " What the Vice President meant, of course, is that "the number of people without health insurance grew last year, to 45 million -- an increase to 15.6 percent from 15.2 percent." (According to the report, "The historical record is marked by a 12-year period from 1987 to 1998 when the uninsured rate (12.9 percent in 1987) either increased or was unchanged from one year to the next. After peaking at 16.3 percent in 1998, the rate fell for two years in a row to 14.2 percent in 2000, before the latest period of annual increases to 15.6 percent in 2003. ")

  Listen: even if you believe this administration is not responsible for the increased percentage of the uninsured during its watch, don't stand there and tell me it's getting better when just the opposite is true. Next week: "I'm proud to say President Bush is making the Earth's climate grow cooler for all the people of the World."

• "CHENEY: Even in this post-9/11 period, Senator Kerry doesn't appear to understand how the world has changed. He talks about leading a 'more sensitive war on terror'... (LAUGHTER) ...as though Al Qaida will be impressed with our softer side. (LAUGHTER) (APPLAUSE) He declared at the Democratic convention that he will forcefully defend America after we have been attacked. My fellow Americans, we have already been attacked... "

  Here I am, thinking Kerry was clearly calling for greater sensitivity to those who are not our enemies, the innocents who will suffer in our war on terror. But apparently he meant we should be more sensitive to Al Qaeda. Stupid stupid stupid! Thanks for clearing that up. And Kerry won't prosecute the War on Terror until we're attacked again? What a dumb ass! I don't remember him saying that, actually, but Cheney wouldn't mischaracterize his statements. Cheney is an honorable man.

Did anybody else think the sea of delegates holding their arms up at an angle, four fingers spread ("four more years!"), palms downward, looked vaguely familiar?