From elsewhere in the Axis of Evil, check out this facinating Sunday Times (UK) piece by Michael Sheridan. It's a first-hand look inside crumbling North Korea, and deserves more play than it's getting. One of the unexpected (at least to me) details suggests the North may have caught what the Chi-Coms call "The Polish Disease":

Word has spread like wildfire of the Christian underground that helps fugitives to reach South Korea. People who lived in silent fear now dare to speak about escape. The regime has almost given up trying to stop them going, although it can savagely punish those caught and sent back.

“Everybody knows there is a way out,” said a woman, who for obvious reasons cannot be identified but who spoke in front of several witnesses.

“They know there is a Christian network to put them in contact with the underground, to break into embassies in Beijing or to get into Vietnam. They know, but you have to pay a lot of money to middlemen who have the Christian contacts.”

There's much, much more, including palace intrigue, assassination attempts, and a strong indication that "Dear Leader" was not exactly pleased with the recent U.S. election results. Wonder what will happen when and if pictures of jubilant Iraqis giving the ink-stained finger to various Axes make it into the Hermit Kingdom?

Read the whole thing.

Scott Maffett sent me this story:

BEIJING (Reuters) - The French used grapes, Russians fermented potatoes, Koreans put ginseng in their drink and Mexicans distilled cactus plants to make fiery tequila.

Now China is introducing fish wine.

That's as far as I could read.

Hitch explains why Iraq isn't Vietnam.

Then again, you knew that already.

Roger L. Simon has the most embarassing scoop on the MSM's performance in Iraq yesterday.

Heh.

Tomorrow night, Andy (of the World Wide Rant) and I will perform an exciting, bold, and daring new experiment in blogging.

Sure, you've seen liveblogging of big speeches. Yeah, readers here already know about drunkblogging. Thanks to the Professor, blogging from various locations around town is nothing new. And since the early days of Samizdata and Sgt. Stryker, group-blogging is old hat.

But have you ever combined them all? Have you? Huh?

Well, we will.

From a not-so-secret location (a bar with a TV and Wi-Fi) to be announced later, Andy, myself and maybe a couple other Colorado bloggers will get drunk and liveblog the President's State of the Union Address.

Never underestimate the power of a laptop, good friends, and a few pitchers of really good beer.

CORRECTION: Oops. Tomorrow is not Wednesday, no matter how many times I tell myself today "feels like" Tuesday.

On the other hand, give Andy and me enough beer, and we could probably drunkblog the 2008 debates no later than this coming August.

Because I live on the Front Range and I have a camera, that's why.

. . .*But were afraid to ask Ted Kennedy.

More trouble for the Eurofighter - it hardly flies, much less fights:

THE seriously delayed and massively over budget Eurofighter Typhoon is so unreliable it is barely airborne, according to the German government, which has just taken delivery of a squadron of the £60m planes.

The new fighter-bomber, being jointly built by the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy, also lacks some of the most basic systems to protect it over the modern battlefield and has been plagued with technical problems.

A report prepared for the defence committee of the German parliament said that the eight aircraft bought for the air force spent an average of just one hour a week in the air because components had to be replaced so frequently.

Despite the fact that my co-blogger Will Collier works on the weapons systems for the F/A-22 Raptor, I'm still not completely sold on our need for such a massive procurement. But unlike the Raptor, the Eurofighter seems like it just plain stinks.

John Hawkins held a blogger symposium with Hugh Hewitt, La Shawn Barber, and Karol Sheinen.

Good stuff.

Jackson Diehl, on keeping Bush honest.

The oil markets seem happy with yesterday's Iraqi election:

Jan. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil futures fell, extending last week's 2.8 percent decline, after insurgents failed to sabotage the Iraqi election, easing concern they may attack export facilities in the Middle East's fifth-largest producer.

OPEC may raise output in the second quarter, President Sheikh Ahmad Fahd al-Ahmad al-Sabah said yesterday after the group agreed to leave production targets unchanged. In Iraq, ``current indications'' are that the election was a success and that ``augurs well for the transition process,'' United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said, according to the UN Web site.

``There's room for oil to go down a bit further,'' Randy Simpson, vice-president of supply and trading at New West Petroleum Inc. in Sacramento, California, said before the start of trading. ``The general consensus was that things were going to go to plan in Iraq, or at least with a bit less mayhem.''

It'll be interseting to see what (if any) reaction the US equities markets have tomorrow.

Also in today's NYT:

AMMAN, Jordan, Jan. 30 - Sometime after the first insurgent attack in Iraq on Sunday morning, news directors at Arab satellite channels and newspaper editors found themselves facing an altogether new decision. Should they report on the violence, or continue to cover the elections themselves?

After nearly two years of providing up-to-the-minute images of explosions and mayhem, and despite months of predictions of a blood bath on election day, some news directors said they found the decision surprisingly easy to make. The violence simply was not the story on Sunday morning; the voting was.

Well, give the Arab press this much credit: They know the difference between a dog-bites-man and a man-bites-dog story.

When the first-ever free & fair election in the entire Arab world was held yesterday in Iraq, Bob Herbert bitches that the process wasn't perfect:

And we should keep in mind that despite the feelings of pride and accomplishment experienced by so many of the voters, yesterday's election was hardly a textbook example of democracy in action. A real democracy requires an informed electorate. What we saw yesterday was an uncommonly brave electorate. But it was woefully uninformed.

Maybe they've been reading too much of the NYT.

OK, OK -- that was a cheap shot. I don't want to sound too much like Professor Pangloss here, but we should really marvel that the bear here can waltz at all, instead of pointing out his lack of rhythm. So, really, maybe all Herbert and I differ on is what's the most important thing today.

Then I read a little further down:

The desire of the U.S., as embodied by the Bush administration, is to exercise as much control as possible over the Middle East and its crucial oil reserves.

That's right: One free election (and $50-plus-a-barrel for oil) later, and Herbert's still claiming "it's all about the OOOOOOIIIIIIILLLLL!"

Listen, bub. I know what "all about the oil" would look like, and it's so ugly, it makes Fallujah look like Farrah Fawcett, back before she had all that work done to her face. "All about the oil" looks like Riyadh, Baghdad and Caracas (yes, Caracas) leveled by city-buster nukes. "All about the oil" looks like the Marines keeping the locals at gunpoint while they pump crude into US-(forcibily re-)flagged tankers. "All about the oil" looks like, well, a lot like European colonializtion in the 18th Century, updated with modern weapons: Go in, take what you want, and fuck the locals.

"All about the oil" doesn't look like:

Sticking around in oil-free Afghanistan, to secure the peace.

Promising free elections in Iraq.

Delivering on said promise.

Publicly stating that we'll leave when asked.

Oh, and -- paying for the damn oil. With American dollars and American blood, I might add.

UPDATE: Orignally, I forgot to include a link to Herbert's column. That's been fixed -- and thanks for the heads-up, Steven.

Reporting from Baghdad, Times (of London) reporters James Hider and Ali Al-Hamdani lead with:

While Shiite areas of Iraq’s capital rushed to embrace a new dawn of democracy yesterday, daybreak in many Sunni areas of western Baghdad was grimly predictable: bursts of gunfire in the half light followed by an ominous silence.

Ominous, eh? But wait, there's less:

In the upscale, mixed Mansour district, even a suicide bomber who killed several people outside a polling station could not stop others exercising their democratic right. Ayman Khalas, a student, said that even as the police scraped up the bomber’s remains, the queue re-formed and voting resumed. “Nothing was going to stop us,” he said.

In a few Sunni areas like Hay al-Adel, close to the dangerous highway to Fallujah, many Sunnis ventured to the polls despite early outbreaks of fighting. “At first, nobody dared go out. But later when they saw it was reasonably quiet, those who lived close to the voting centres went,” said Omar Nadum, an engineer.

Read the whole story, and you'll find that maybe, perhaps, some Sunni areas were (ahem) disenfranchised:

"For me, the results are predetermined, and I don’t think my participation will change anything," said Omar, a disaffected former army officer whose father was killed by Saddam Hussein’s regime. "First, I don’t doubt there will be ballot-rigging, and secondly, none of the candidates are worthy of representing Iraq or writing its constitution."

Strange, isn't it, that the one disaffected guy the Times chose to quote sounds like he got his talking points directly from the Ted Kennedy/John Kerry Wing of the DNC?

Glenn asks,

The question is, will the Democrats be willing to do to Ted Kennedy, for his remarks on the war, what Republicans did to Trent Lott, for his remarks on Strom Thurmond and the 1948 election?

The answer: absolutely not, because unlike in Lott's case, the majority of the party, and the overwhelming majority of the activists and donors agree with Kennedy completely. They also have the added benefit of knowing the MSM will never call Kennedy to account for anything he says.

Forget about what Sherman did to the place; as for today, Atlanta, she is frozen.

The bad weather started a little after noon yesterday, a steady patter of sleet that lasted for hours, but didn't accumulate. That turned into rain around midnight, even as the temperature was dropping. A slushy mix kept falling until around dawn. This is the result, at least around our house:

The atmosphere outside is nothing short of eerie. No traffic sounds at all, but when the wind blows, you hear the crackling of ice on the tree branches around you. It sounds like an army of squirrels nibbling away on ten thousand acorns.

Things could certainly be worse. Unlike previous ice storms, we haven't lost power, and although my cable modem's lifeline looks precarious:

... it hasn't failed yet. There are certainly lots of people in worse straits than we are today. Still, the roads, including street we live on, are sheets of ice, and I really, really needed to get over to Alabama today. That's not going to happen, unless there's a miraculous thaw. I'd be lucky to make it to the grocery store right now (fortunately, we stocked up already).

We're not expected to get above freezing until sometime Sunday, and the precipitation forecast for today and tonight ranges between 80 and 100 percent. And what the heck, the dog seems to enjoy it:

UPDATE: 6PM Eastern. Very steady rain now, and the temperature is dropping. We didn't try to drive anywhere today, and watching two idiots slipping and sliding their cars up the hill going out of the neighborhood was proof we'd made the right choice (by some miracle, they didn't hit each other, but both wound up sliding into somebody's yard).

This is going to be a rough night, much moreso than last night. You can hear branches popping all over, and our power went out for the first time about a half hour ago. It came back in about five minutes, but I don't expect that to last. Fortunately, tomorrow is supposed to be much warmer, but there are going to be some dark, cold, icy hours between now and then.

I have two favorite quotes for January 27, 2005. Here's the first one:

[Larry Sumners] thought he was speaking in a place that encourages uncircumscribed intellectual explorations. He was not. He was on a university campus.

Heh.

And this bit, too:

MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins. . . "felt I was going to be sick. My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow." And, "I just couldn't breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill." She said that if she had not bolted from the room, "I would've either blacked out or thrown up."

Is this the fruit of feminism? A woman at the peak of the academic pyramid becomes theatrically flurried by an unwelcome idea and, like a Victorian maiden exposed to male coarseness, suffers the vapors and collapses on the drawing room carpet in a heap of crinolines until revived by smelling salts and the offending brute's contrition?

Both snippets are from the same George Will column.

It's been said that every little tiny new bit of human thought since about 1996 has been reproduced on the internet. Obviously, that's an overstatement.

Until maybe now:

Those folks at Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) just keep churning out new applications. Yesterday it was Google Video, which allows users to search the Internet for content of a number of television shows by using the show's closed-captioning information. "What Google did for the Web," Google founder Larry Page said in a press release, "Google Video aims to do for television."

To say that this service is in beta mode might be an understatement -- even for the company with the understated, plain-white-background home page. For the moment, the number of TV providers the company currently indexes is limited -- PBS, the NBA, Fox (NYSE: FOX) News, and C-SPAN got top billing in the press release. And Google has been indexing TV data since only last month. (Meanwhile, Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) has added a search to its front page that lets you search and inspect video clips.)

But the possibilities for Google are nonetheless impressive. Among the highlights the company listed: program previews using still images, information about upcoming airings, and keyword searches within specific programs. This all has the potential to be of great interest to paying broadcasters who are looking for new ways to raise awareness of their programming.

If everything on TV from Meet the Press to Queer Eye will soon be Google-able, it won't be long until everything, period, is on some search engine somewhere.

Frankly, I don't know whether to be shaken or excited or both.

Apparently, it's time to define MILF down.

Could an "Orange"-style revolution be in Russia's future?

NOTE: Now would be a good time for a mea culpa moment - one I've been putting off for months. Read this giddy post from 2002, and you'll understand.

A throwaway line from a post on Monday left me with that I Love Lucy feeling. You know: "Lucy, you gots some 'splaining to do."

So I'm working on a little column about money. Problem is, it might be TCS material, rather than VP material. I'll talk with Nick Schulz tomorrow and see what he thinks.

Meantime, the site is experiencing some serious trouble. Don't know if it's another DDoS attack on HostMatters, or just something local on my end. In any case, I was lucky just to get posted this sad little excuse for something interesting.

You can chalk me up as another victim of John Scalzi's Old Man's War. The book arrived this afternoon, and I've hardly put it down.

Don't think I will until I've finished, either.

UPDATE: Damn, that was good. Now I've got a doctor's appointment this morning -- back in a bit.

Stem cells ain't what they used to be. Not the Federally-approved ones, that is:

A new study released by scientists at the University of California - San Diego says all of the existing federally funded stem cell lines are contaminated, but UW researchers say this is no surprise. According to Terry Devitt, UW director of research and communications, the human embryonic stem cells are grown in a culture that includes animal cells. He says the presence of animal cells compromises the use of these stem cell lines in treating humans, but these cell lines were developed for research, never intended for use in humans.

''It's always been known that new lines would need to be derived and grown in the absence of animal cells for those to be useful in the clinic.'' Devitt says.

The good news (for once) is, Leon Kass might actually understand the problem, and be open to certain avenues of advancement.

Stephen Bainbridge has a few questions for the Washington Post's Barton Gellman:

Did the Pentagon intend to disclose this program or did only to do so in response to Gellman's investigation? If the latter, why isn't his conduct basically treasonous? Did he put personal self-interest as a journalist ahead of the national security? If operatives are killed or missions blown as a result of this story, will Gellman feel any remorse? If the countries named in his story as targets of the missions pull out of the war on terror, will Gellman accept any responsibility for the resulting harm to our national security?

Today's Required Reading is Paul Krugman. Yes, Paul Krugman:

Alan Greenspan is expected to retire next year. The Bush administration, because of its nature, will have a hard time finding a successor.

One Fed chairman famously described his job as being to "take away the punch bowl just when the party gets going." Bond and currency markets want monetary policy in the hands of someone who will say no to politicians. When a country's central banker is suspected of having insufficient spine, the result is higher interest rates and a weaker currency.

Today it's even more crucial than usual that the Fed chairman have the markets' trust. The United States is running record budget and trade deficits, and the foreigners we depend on to cover those deficits are losing faith. According to yesterday's Financial Times, central banks around the world have already started shifting into euros. If Mr. Greenspan is replaced with someone who looks like a partisan hack, capital will rush to the exits, the dollar will plunge, and interest rates will soar.

Forget the partisan sniping about Bush's personality, and ask yourself: Who replaces Greenspan?

Fact of the matter is, thanks to this spendthrift Republican Congress (and its non-veto-pen-wielding Enabler-in-Chief in the Oval Office), Bush might just be painted into a corner. He'll need a Fed Chairman who will publicly back his spending policies – but unless he's got a Mini Greenspan clone hidden somewhere, Bush is unlikely to find one with enough gravitas and trust to keep the markets happy.

One line of Krugman's bears repeating:

If Mr. Greenspan is replaced with someone who looks like a partisan hack, capital will rush to the exits, the dollar will plunge, and interest rates will soar.

Of course, that nasty scenario could happen with or without a second-rate Fed Chairman. It could even happen in the unlikely event that Congress regains some fiscal sanity.

Imagine a new alliance. One where, in the space of a day or a week or a month, China starts dumping dollars and the Gulf oil sheikdoms decide to denominate oil in euros.

Sleep tight.

Did Hillary Clinton have her first Sister Souljah Moment in preparation for Decision '08? According to Drudge, it sure looks that way:

Proposing new political language about abortion rights for an increasingly skittish Democratic Party, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that friends and foes on the issue should come together on "common ground" to reduce the number of "unwanted pregnancies" and ultimately abortions, which she called a "sad, even tragic choice to many, many women."

Clinton, in a speech to about 1,000 abortion rights supporters at the state Capitol, firmly restated her support for Roe v. Wade.

But then she offered warm words to opponents of abortion and said that faith and organized religion were the "primary" reasons teenagers abstained from sexual relations.

The New York Times has the full story.

Melissa has been out of town all weekend, visiting her best friend in Mississippi. I've busied myself with odd jobs around the house -- followed by dinner, drinks, and poker over at the in-laws.

In other words: I'm beat. See you Monday.

Practically since the moment the Mac Mini was announced, the online Macintosh communities have been ablaze with commentary from people who'd like to use one of these suckers as a DVR and A/V hub. From DealMac to AVSForum to PVRBlog, there's a sizeable cohort of tech-savvy folks who look at the Mini-Mac and say, "That belongs right next to my friggin' huge HDTV."

Unfortunatley for all those folks (myself included), the Mini just isn't built for that task. The hard drive is too small and too slow (it's just a 4200 rpm laptop drive), and the video card and G4 processor don't have the horsepower to play back HD video. The current models of Minis are designed to be either second computers for Mac owners, or first Macs for Windows users who're fed up with Microsoft and want to see how the other side lives.

But. That's just the first model. Who's to say there won't be an A/V Mini coming down the pipe from Cupertino in the future? Noted tech historian Bob Cringely (real name Mark Stephens, who was briefly one of Apple's first employees) thinks Steve Jobs is working a deal with Sony to make a set-top Macintosh that'll act as a video server for downloaded movies.

Personally, I think that's a neat idea, but what I'd really like to have is an affordable Mac that can act as a high-definition ReplayTV--and that's ReplayTV, not Tivo, folks. Tivo imposes way too many MPAA-demanded limitations on content for my tastes. I want a box that will schedule, record and play back HD programs, and will also allow me to edit and permanently record that content to removable media, preferably some form of DVD. I can do all that now for standard definition with my Replays and my 2001-era G4 Mac tower, thanks to DVArchive software.

It's theoretically possible to do all of the above in HD with a G4-class Mac and ElGato's EyeTV 500 Firewire box--but only in theory. The ElGato box is designed to need a dual-processor G5 Mac for full HD playback, and that's a dang sight more powerful, expensive, and bulky a computer than the new Mini-Mac. It's alleged that one could overcome the Mini's lack of juice by playing back HD video through a set-top HD converter box with a Firewire port, but I haven't found an example of anybody who's actually done this, and even if I did, I suspect the process is too ungainly for casual use (i.e., my wife would hate it).

Still, if all the EyeTV 500 box needs is the processing power of a set-top box, what's to keep ElGato from building that in to a prospective EyeTV 600, plus a heftier hard drive? I don't think we can count on Apple to produce an HD-PVR-ready Mac anytime soon; after all, Jobs himself is the CEO of a major (and very successful) movie studio, Pixar. He's not going to cross his fellow moguls with a pre-broadcast-flag HD PVR system... but I wouldn't be if a future video-hub Mini does arrive with some kind of DRM built in, a la the iTunes music store.

Until then, though, Apple's best customers are shouting about what they'd love to be able to buy from the company. If Jobs isn't listening, somebody else almost certainly is. Stay tuned.

NBC is reporting that Johnny Carson has died.

I really feel sorry for people who weren't old enough to see and appreciate Carson while he was still on the air. He was just So. Damn. Good. His successors, on every network, are decidedly pale reflections, and I doubt any of them would seriously argue that Carson was head and shoulders above anybody else who's ever hosted a talk show, anywhere. His blend of great good humor, high taste, low comedy, and refusal to condescend to anybody, regardless of who they were or where they came from, almost certainly can't be duplicated in today's mass media.

Now he'll be missed even more. RIP.

HundredPercenter has shots of the protests in Washington today.

. . . "MSM" in German?

We know from their own admission, that CNN cozied up to Saddam for "access." Well, guess what: Some international (AFP) reporters are awfully cozy with the Palestinian Authority:

The story of candidate [and Agence France-Presse journalist Majida al-] Batsh, who wound up withdrawing her candidacy weeks ahead of the vote, highlights many concerns about the identity and political affiliation of several Palestinian journalists employed by international news organizations and TV networks to cover the Palestinian issue. It also underlines concerns about the credibility of much foreign news coverage in general in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In addition to her work at the French news agency, Batsh was also a reporter for the PA's official organ, Al-Ayyam,. In other words, she was also on the PA's payroll, since the Ramallah-based newspaper was established and is financed by the PA. Al-Ayyam's editor, Akram Haniyeh, has been listed as an adviser to Yasser Arafat.

But Batsh was not the only journalist at AFP who was working simultaneously for the PA. One of the agency's correspondents in the Gaza Strip is Adel Zanoun, who also happens to be the chief reporter in the area for the PA's Voice of Palestine radio station.

The AFP bureau chief in Jerusalem, Patrick Anidjar, refuses to discuss the issue, saying, "I don't understand why you have to have the name of our correspondents." Pressed to give a specific answer, he says: "I don't want our correspondents' names to go into print. I don't want to answer the question. What is this, a police investigation?"

There's more from new-to-me blogger Melanie Phillips.

. . .it's hecklers!

New trolls -- well, troll, singular -- the last couple weeks. Not a new one -- I recognize the style. Deleted some off-topic comments, left up the others.

But now he's gotten boring and insulting again, so away he goes.

Oh, he IP-hops across Brazil and rarely uses the same fake email address twice, so keeping up with the poor soul will cost me a couple minutes a day. But since I, being a right-wing capitalist pig, mostly waste my time sipping rare liquors and lighting Cuban cigars with 30-year Treasuries, I have a couple minutes a day to spare.

Buh-bye.

So much for my hopes that last two election debacles had taught the DNC any valuable lessons:

Howard Dean's hard-charging race to head the Democratic National Committee is gaining early momentum that recalls the streaking start of his 2004 presidential campaign.

On Tuesday, the former Vermont governor announced he had the unanimous backing of the Florida delegation to the DNC and also the support of Democratic chairs in Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma, Washington state and Vermont. He plans house parties around the nation later this week, like the ones he used while trying to gain the Democratic presidential nomination.

Yeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaagh.

The swearing in is done, the speech has been given, and the parties will go on until dawn. Well, the parties might, but President Bush will probably still be in bed at ten. Go figure.

My biggest hope for Bush 43.5 is that it doesn't suck as much as most second-term administrations do. We can probably count on seeing:

· At least one big homegrown scandal - a practical requirement for second-termers.

· An even bigger focus on international affairs, especially after 2006 - and ditto.

· And, hopefully, the Democrats finally becoming a serious national party again.

Even if they don't, a Democrat probably has a better than even chance of winning next time around. It's been a busy four years, and the next four don't promise much respite. If only because of exhaustion, it could be difficult for voters to elect another Republican in 2008.

So I guess, really, that my biggest hope in the next four years is that the Democrats can fix what ails them at the national level. From this far out, the next Republican field of candidates looks pretty weak to me - but the Democrats look like they could be even worse.

But that's all a topic for another day - or year. For better or worse, we've got Bush until January, 2009, so let's wish him and this country the best.

UPDATE: Good analysis and coverage from Sully.

Speaking of inaugurals:

KIEV, Ukraine Jan 20, 2005 — Parliament scheduled a Sunday inauguration for Western-leaning President-elect Viktor Yushchenko, setting the stage for the transition to a new government for Ukraine following months of divisive political crisis.

Even Vladimir Putin is getting on the bandwagon:

"Accept my congratulations and warmest wishes in connection with your election to the post of president of Ukraine," Putin said in a statement.

"The development of good-neighborly and equal relations with Ukraine is one of the most important national priorities of Russia," he said.

Cough, cough.

Correction: Live audio blogging, from the Inaugural .

More Air America woes:

Air America apparently is not flying too well in Philly. The liberal talk network's home since Aug. 30 is WHAT-AM (1340), which airs shows by Al Franken (noon to 3 p.m.) and Randi Rhodes (3 to 7 p.m.). Arbitron ratings for fall were released last week. Though specific numbers are not available for Franken's time slot, a check of Rhodes' finds that WHAT's ratings have dropped.

Among total listeners ages 12 and older, the station managed a 0.5 rating in fall 2003; it got a 0.3 this time. The "cume," the cumulative number of weekly listeners, fell from 22,000 to 17,800. By comparison, Sean Hannity and Dom Giordano on talk rival WPHT-AM (1210) had a 4.4 rating and cume of 217,800 weekly listeners; the top afternoon-drive station was WBEB-FM (101.1), with a 7.6 rating and a cume of 441,100.

Ouch.

Hey, anyone care to recommend a nice bed & breakfast in London?

We don't (yet) have a preference for any particular part of town, just a nice B&B with decent Tube access.

UPDATE: Got so caught up searching for places to stay - thanks in no small part because of some fine suggestions - that I forgot all about blogging tonight. Anyway, it's midnight, so I'm going to take my book and go to bed.

Sekimori has done it again.

Let's hope so:

BOSTON -- The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency has been placed on standby, and public safety officials are meeting at the bunker, officials said Wednesday.

There have been reports that the FBI office in Boston received a call from an FBI office in California warning officials about a suspicious person that may be in the area, according to the Boston Herald's Web site.

There have been no specific threats made, but FBI agents in Boston have been put on alert, and officials started to gather at MEMA at about 1:30 p.m.

NewsCenter 5 and TheBostonChannel.com will have more information as it becomes available.

UPDATE: Jeff Quinton is live-blogging the local coverage.

Heh.

Pejman Yousefzadeh on the uneasy web alliance between certain libertarians and conservatives.

This is my niece, Naomi Davis:

Feel free to ooh and ahh and ootchie ootchie goo all you like.

We call the French "cheese-eating surrender monkeys." The Germans, for all their fearsome reputation, haven't thrown a winning war since 1870. It took Italy two wars before it could beat godforsaken Ethiopia. Poland owes its national existence to the kindness of strangers negotiating around a Versailles conference table. The last time the Spanish won a war, they were fighting each other – and so ineptly that the damnable, sad affair was half-fought by foreigners.

But make no mistake: The Europeans are good at killing. Revolutionary France started the first modern revolution in warfare by inventing the mass army of conscription. A Brit, James Puckle, invented the machine gun. Put the two together, and you get the First World War – global war and "total war" being two other European gifts to the world, wrapped into one shiny little conflict.

From tanks to civilian bombing to Hitler's ovens, Europe has given the world more ways to kill more numbers of people than probably any other continent. In fact, Europeans named Lenin and Hitler invented those killing machines we call "totalitarian states."

Not that each and every one of those items is a bad thing. Were it not for the tank, Europe might still be fighting on the Western Front, nearly 91 years after the Great War started. Civilian bombing certainly shortened that war's popular 1939 sequel. Despite some local atrocities, it's hard to argue that European colonialism wasn't more civil for western Africa and the Middle East than the local governments they have in those places today. And how did European nations become global empires? In no small measure because of their talents for killing.

Anyway, that's what popped into my head after reading the most recent post here by Will Collier. After reading an article showing that the Netherlands (former owners of Indonesia, one of the world's largest Muslim nations) could be majority-Islamic fairly shortly, Will said:

What happens 20 or 30 years from now, when demographic trends could well result in "minority-majority" (or even outright majority) status for the Islamic cohort in western Europe? If they're faced with the options of dhimmitude or flight, where will the native Europeans flee to?

Why, here, of course.

What Will left out is the third option. If somewhere down the road the worst should come to worst, Europeans could always stay home and fight. And don't think they couldn't.

Problem is, the fight wouldn't be the pretty kind where you see a few bold arrows drawn on the map, confidently slicing through history and the enemy lines. We're not talking Desert Storm here, which you could draw with five arrows and lasted only 96 hours. We're not even talking about the Liberation of France in 1944, which took slightly more arrows and just six weeks. Oh, no.

We'd be talking about city fighting. But not the kind of city fighting you saw in Saving Private Ryan, where the likeable, well-trained and battle-hardened soldiers could call in an air strike just when all seemed lost. Thanks to modern Europe finally putting "ain't gonna study war no more" into nearly full effect, they hardly have any battle-hardened soldiers. They hardly have any soldiers left at all.

The city fighting we'd see in Europe would look like what we saw in Sarajevo ten years ago. You know, ragtag bands of men with no uniforms, stolen weapons, and a desire to kill anybody who looked Muslim (or on the Muslim side, European). Holland and Denmark would fare worst. They're both tiny, both have very high (and increasing) Muslim populations, and neither country has much of a modern military tradition. In this worst-case scenario, the likelihood of ethnic mob rule ala Bosnia seems high.

Want to take the worst-case a little further? Both countries border Germany, which might feel the very legitimate need to march in to restore Ordnung. I think we all know what usually happens once the Germans start goose-stepping through their smaller neighbors.

No, the result wouldn't be World War III (or V?). But Europe could very well become Bosnia on a continental scale, with all the devastation, mass graves, and ethnic cleansing that implies. You can bet, at best, there would be a whole lot of people put at gunpoint onto refugee boats bound for North Africa and the Levant. Assuming, of course, the Europeans win in such a scenario. If not, the poor refugees would speak languages much like our own, and be bound for our own shores – just like Will suggested.

Me, though, I'd put my money on the Europeans winning a war of mass, mechanized murder.

After all, they invented it.

Something's been bothering me since reading Christopher Caldwell's piece on the Netherlands in the wake of Theo van Gogh's murder. It's this bit:

The question naturally arises: If immigrants behave this way now, what will happen when they are far more numerous, as all authorities have long promised they will be? It has been estimated that the country's two largest cities, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, will be "majority minority" very soon (Rotterdam is today at 47 percent), and already 65 percent of primary and secondary students in both cities are of non-Dutch parentage. London's Daily Telegraph, citing immigration experts and government statistics, reported a net outflow of 13,000 people from Holland in the first six months of 2004, the first such deficit in half a century. One must treat this statistic carefully--it could be an artifact of an aging population in which many are retiring to warmer places. But it could also be the beginning of something resembling the American suburban phenomenon of "white flight," occurring at the level of an entire country.

What if a considerable fraction--even a large minority--of that 13,000 really are fleeing from Islamic radicalism? What happens 20 or 30 years from now, when demographic trends could well result in "minority-majority" (or even outright majority) status for the Islamic cohort in western Europe? If they're faced with the options of dhimmitude or flight, where will the native Europeans flee to?

Why, here, of course.

Lots will go to Canada, I would guess particularly the Scandinavians, and plenty more will go to Australia. But the majority will be drawn right here to the USA. After all, we've got more room, more money, more opportunities--and most importantly, we're the most able to protect our own. Not unlike their ancestors' cousins of past centuries, the majority of those who give up on Europe will come here.

And then what? What will we do with them? More interestingly, what will they do to us? Will the 'blue states' fill up with UNphilic Euro-refugees and get bluer? Or will the refugees, haven been driven from their homes by radical Islam, lean more towards the 'red' Scots-Irish motto of nemo me impune lacessit?

I don't have any idea. You don't, either. It's silly to even project current political trends in this country 20 years from now. In 1985, the South was still a province of the Democratic Party at virtually every level below the Presidency, and California was reliably Republican. Nobody really knows what the political maps will look like in 2025, much less how those maps might be impacted by a new wave of European immigrants.

But somebody ought to start thinking about it, both here, and across the pond. Just in case Holland is the canary in Europe's coal mine.

Here's a big, loud dog that didn't bark in what CBS's Rathergate report.

So, putting aside the typos, the superscripts, the signatures, the wrong header and address, and all the previously dissected items susceptible to subjective interpretations, how do I prove this memo is a fake? Easy — for the weekend that 1st Lt. Bush was supposedly ordered to report for his physical, May 13-14, 1972, the Ellington Air Guard Base was closed. It was Mother's Day. Except for emergencies, Air Guard units never drilled on Mother's Day; the divorce lawyers would be waiting at the gate.

If George Bush showed up at the clinic that weekend, he would have had to get the key from the gate guard.

The drill weekend for May 1972 was the following weekend, May 20-21. A survey of the pay and flight records of several of the Texas Air Guard members of that period shows no activity for May 13-14, but drill pay vouchers and flights for May 20-21. Guard flight physicals were normally conducted on the drill weekends, because that is the only time all the required clinic personnel were on hand to complete lab work and flight surgeon consultations mandated for aircrew. Does anyone think that Jerry Killian, squadron commander and one of the drill-schedule planners would not know on May 4 that the clinic was closed the next weekend?

As the author, William Campenni, notes elsewhere in his piece, those facts, all by themselves, shatter any lingering credibility in the Mapes/Bullock memos (which can no longer be referred to in any honesty as "Killian memos"). One would think that had either CBS News or "the Panel" of Richard Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi known the other officers from then-Lieutenant George W. Bush's squadron hadn't logged a single hour during the weekend when Bush was allegedly ordered to report for a flight physical, that would have been the last step needed to determine the memos were fraudulent.

Except that they did have that information:

While CBS, in its rush to judgment, might have missed this fatal flaw in the Burkett memo, its investigative law firm, Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham LLP, cannot be excused. Why? Because one of their investigating lawyers was informed of this fact on Nov. 15 and given a list of seven witnesses who worked in the same offices with Jerry Killian every day in 1972. (Disclosure statement: I was the source.) The panel report makes no mention of this, and a canvass of most of the witness list reveals no contact attempt by Kirkpatrick & Lockhart.

As John Podhoretz noted last week, Thornburgh and Boccardi were not an 'independent panel.' They and their law firm were hired by CBS--and following the ethical standards of lawyers in this country, their first duty was protecting their clients. They did so in true lawyerly fashion by simply not mentioning inconvenient facts, and without any adversarial attorneys on the other side, they may well have assumed that nobody would ever call them on it.

Wrong guess. Information is no longer the sole property of the MSM--or their law firms.

The report is a whitewash. The memos are frauds--and CBS still won't admit it. So we'll just have to go on doing the job they're supposed to be doing themselves.

CBS News tries to explain away why you can't cut'n'paste from the PDF file of the Rathergate Report:

According to Linda Mason, a CBS News executive who served as a liaison between the network and the independent panel, an attorney from the law firm called her on Wednesday and asked that the digital restrictions be made - including the prevention of copying and pasting. The fear, it seems, was that an enterprising ne'er-do-well could copy the text into a new document and begin circulating a faked version of the report.

"The bloggers and anybody else can do what they want with it," Ms. Mason said. "It's out there for the public to see. We're not trying to hide anything."

Well, of course we can do whatever we want with it or anything else -- that point was proven mere hours after Dan Rather broadcast his questionable-at-best story.

If it weren't for blogs, however, there probably never would have been any Rathergate, or any PDF files documenting just how badly CBS screwed up. Instead, we'd have yet another media fable enshrined as common knowledge. And very possibly, we'd have a new Administration to make the whole point moot.

So what's going on here then, anyway? Simple: CBS knows that bloggers cut and paste; CBS made cut and paste difficult to do. In other words, CBS stuck a very small finger in the very big eye which now holds their CBS Eye to account.

How charmlessly childish of them.

New to me, anyway. Check out this post at Sisyphean Musings, then click here and just read and scroll.

Tom Pachinski emailed, wondering if "America has already become a dhimmi nation?"

Just in case you forgot what made Martin Luther King, Jr. so special:

I once described Syria as "terror's psychopathically incompetent kid brother," but it looks like things are worse than I thought.

No, Ted Kennedy, you're wrong.

It's Lileks, so you're going to read it anyway. Still. . .

"Twixters" are the new worry of the usual worrywarts:

Everybody knows a few of them—full-grown men and women who still live with their parents, who dress and talk and party as they did in their teens, hopping from job to job and date to date, having fun but seemingly going nowhere. Ten years ago, we might have called them Generation X, or slackers [or "Steve" –Ed.], but those labels don't quite fit anymore.

Apparently, there are millions of these grown-ups kids now: Putting off marriage (women now marry on average at 25 and have their first baby at the same age; ten years ago, the average ages were 21 and 22 respectively); putting off real careers; putting off wearing regular-size pants that don't hang down below their ass cracks, etc.

The story continues:

The twixters aren't lazy, the argument goes, they're reaping the fruit of decades of American affluence and social liberation. This new period is a chance for young people to savor the pleasures of irresponsibility, search their souls and choose their life paths. But more historically and economically minded scholars see it differently. They are worried that twixters aren't growing up because they can't. Those researchers fear that whatever cultural machinery used to turn kids into grownups has broken down, that society no longer provides young people with the moral backbone and the financial wherewithal to take their rightful places in the adult world. Could growing up be harder than it used to be?

Well, no.

Learning to pay the rent on small-market radio wages supplied me with more "moral backbone" than all the homework (not to mention marching and rifle drills) assigned to me at Missouri Military Academy. It's not like the twixters aren't working or paying the rent, as snipped bits of the story make plain. Really, it's hard to argue there's anything inherently wrong with enjoying your twenties – Whomever knows, I certainly did. And yet. . . I can't help thinking that this time, the worrywarts have a point.

So bear with me while I go into Premature Old Fogey Mode.

The problem with young people these days... is old people. Specifically, their parents. Why, back in my day (really, I'm suffering a bad case of POF tonight) growing up was A Good Thing. By that I mean: being a kid was fine and all, but the really cool stuff was either reserved for adults or considered a special treat.

A few examples.

If I wanted to go on a ride, I not only had to be a good boy, but I had to wait for Memorial Day weekend when Six Flags finally opened. Today, The Home Depot has race car shopping carts. And don't tell me you haven't seen some infantile parent pushing their kid around in one at 50 miles an hour. Thirty years ago, I got waffle prints on my ass from the wire mesh shopping cart seat – if I wanted to ride like a child rather than walk like an adult. Today, the choices are between walking endless miles of plumbing supplies, or riding around in a daddy-powered racer.

Then there are clothes. Oh, I don't mean to bitch about Big Pants and the return of Hippy Chic – youth fashion is nearly always stupid and embarrassing, if only in retrospect. But I do mean to bitch about children dressed like grownups. The little girls I knew wore sexless Oshkosh B'Gosh overalls, not today's Wee Tramp outfits. [ED. NOTE: Ask any male between the ages of 30 and 50 about the 14-year-old girls these days, and each honest one will say, "Where were those girls when I was that age?"] Now, when a twixter gets married (at age 37 or whatever), there are usually half a dozen tots present in tuxedos, all turned out sharper than the groom. I wasn't allowed my first tux until I was 15, and then only because there was a formal dance requiring I wear one. We were once expected to be old enough to at least act grown up before we were allowed to dress the part.

Then there are my two pet peeves: Restaurants and movie theaters. Time was, a child screaming during the opening credits meant a quick visit from a politely-perturbed usher – if, that is, the parents didn't deal with their child first. Either way, problem solved and quickly. Just last year, I had people (not the parents!) in the theater hiss at me for daring to suggest to the parents of a screaming five-year-old that they ought to remove him from the show until he calmed down. Meanwhile, the 15-year-olds spent most of the movie text messaging one another, the glow of their cell phones dragging my eyes away from the flick. And don't even get me started on restaurants. If I don't go to Olive Garden anymore, it's not because of certain Eurocritics; it's because most chain restaurants have become indoor playgrounds where Mom can get a nice Chardonnay. Back in the day, I'd have gotten a stern look threatening the worst if I so much as squirmed in my high chair.

And we wonder why some kids today don't want to grow up? We've taken all the incentives out of the process. We're subsidizing childhood, then scratching our heads at why it lasts so much longer.

The other half of the problem might seem at first glance to contradict the first half – but that doesn't make it any less true. And that is: kids today aren't treated enough like, well, kids.

When I first heard the term "playdate," I thought it was a joke. Me and Kevin Kahlmeyer didn't make dates; we'd ask Mom if the other could come over and play. "Spending the night" was a bigger deal, requiring permission from both Moms. But everything still had an ad hoc spirit to it. Poor kids today need to carry PDAs to figure out where they're supposed to be and when.

Then there's the safety issue. I'm completely convinced that I'm a good driver today because, as a kid, I wasn't required to wear my weight in safety equipment when riding my bike. Kids today aren't learning those lessons – so it's really no wonder that they're spending their money suping up their Honda Civics (or Honda Piper Cubs, as I like to call the ones with those massive, wing-like rear spoilers) instead of putting their cash away to make the down payment on a house. I suffered enough skinned knees (and just once, a skinned face) to teach me that getting there safely is at least half the thrill. To support my point, I remember reading in Reason a few years back that people who drive safer cars tend to cause more accidents than people driving non-Volvos.

In other words: We do our kids a disservice by keeping them in cocoons. Of course, I say all this as someone who hasn't yet had to raise any kids. Perhaps, I'm just a childless crank bitching about those more fortunate.

But I still can't help feeling that we're not raising kids to become twixters – we're creating twixters from about the age of two. We don't treat kids like kids while they're kids, and we've taken away most of their inducements to blossom into adults. The result is as odd and off-putting as the word coined to describe them.

[/PrematureOldFogey]

On the other hand... who knows? Maybe they'll grow out of it.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll concurs, and with better examples.

Yeah, I'm blogging tonight. But a story grabbed my attention, and the resulting essay is long-winded, even by my standards.

Back in about 45 minutes, half a martini, and an additional 450 words from now.

NOTE: "Now" is 10:42pm Mountain.

Just a friendly Vodkasphere public service announcement here.

I mentioned a day or two ago that the new "Battlestar Galactica" series was my favorite TV show of 2004. That might have sounded a little odd for many reasons, but especially so considering the show doesn't premiere in the US until tonight (January 14). But thanks to an oddball contractural agreement, it's been playing in the UK since last fall, and the episodes aren't terribly hard to find online (no, I'm not going to give you directions, so don't ask).

Frankly, I didn't expect to like this show at all. I'd watched the 1978 original avidly, and loved it--but what the hell, I was in the fourth grade back then. As one of Pixar's execs noted recently, kids have no taste, and will watch pretty much anything (no link and no name, sorry; I think I read it in an airline magazine). The Sci-Fi Channel, which is responsible for the "BG" remake, runs the original shows all the time, and at 36, I can barely stand to watch them. Take away the neat-looking spaceships, and it's just standard-issue 70's television. In other words, crap (although I still think Lorne Greene was great as Adama--sue me).

Listen, you're just going to have to trust me on this one, because I was thinking the same thing you were a few months ago: "'Battlestar Galactica?' C'mon, that's a punch line. It's the definition of suckage. What, are you going to tell me to watch 'Buck Rodgers' next?" Full disclosure: I have neither a Tron costume nor (ahem) a Lego Star Destroyer in my house. I'm not saying any of this out of loyalty to nerd-dom.

When the "miniseries" version of the new "BG" came out in late 2003, I tuned in mostly out of sick curiosity, i.e., "Let's see how much this sucks." I was pleasantly surprised to get adequate entertainment instead. It wasn't great. At four hours minus many, many, many commercials, the thing dragged a lot. Some of the acting was good (Edward James Olmos as Adama, Mary McDonnell as a Secretary of Education suddenly elevated to the presidency), and some not so good (the new Apollo was almost as wooden as the original). But it wasn't bad.

So I, ah, arranged to view the first couple of episodes when they showed up online in the fall... and I was astonished by how good they were. At forty-odd minutes a show, they had a speed and vitality that was missing from the miniseries, and the writing was so much better than the original show, there wasn't any point in quibbling about Starbuck being a girl and Colonel Tigh becoming a bald white dude (okay, I'm still a little torqued about that one, but let it pass).

Anyway, I've gone on way too long here, but the bottom line is: Check it out. The premiere two episodes run back-to-back tonight on Sci-Fi, and they're terrific, especially the first one, titled simply "33."

I'll guarantee you this much: it's a hell of a lot better--and more grown-up--than any 'reality' crap you'll find on the tube tonight...

UPDATE: As a reader points out, I completely goofed up the Pixar thing above; his name is Craig Good, and the interview was on NRO. I mixed it up with a Brad Bird interview I read on an airplane.

Also, Ain't It Cool News collects a whole bunch of positive mainstream press reviews of the show here. Pretty strong endorsements, especially considering every non-geek critic over 30 had to have been pre-wired to hate this one.

Late night tonight and a busy day Friday. Odds of blogging: Slim.

What's the real deal behind the Apple Mini Mac? E-Week's Tom Steinert-Threlkeld explains:

What I saw was the future of Apple Computer: A device that fits anywhere in the home and hooks up to any screen that can handle digital input.

Lots of Windows-side executives are making big noise about producing machines for the living room. They call them "media centers." A few are on the market. Some get good reviews.

But Jobs is the first executive, in the view from here, to really give a carrot that will pull along the move to convert the living room to digits.

A 40 gig machine with 256meg of memory probably isn't enough to replace my Gateway desktop - but at $500, it could replace my TiVo and CD and DVD players.

Only question is, can I get one with a remote control?

Peggy Noonan (who was once a producer for Dan Rather, incidentally) in today's WSJ:

Mr. Fineman asserts that the MSM came into existence after World War II, which is essentially true, but goes on to claim that it came into existence as the result of the fact that "a temporary moderate consensus came to govern the country." Please. America was a political battleground in those days, fighting over everything from McCarthyism to the true nature of communism to the proper role of government to Vietnam. The MSM didn't come into existence because of a brief period of political comity. The MSM rose because it had a monopoly. And it fell because it lost that monopoly.
...

All this has been said before but this can't be said enough: The biggest improvement in the flow of information in America in our lifetimes is that no single group controls the news anymore.

Quite right, and whether in Iraq or Minnesota or even Lafayette, Lousiana, there is nothing so desperate, angry, or ugly as a monopoly that's losing its grip.

More:

Only 20 years ago, when you were enraged at what you felt was the unfairness of a story, or a bias on the part of the storyteller, you could do this about it: nothing. You could write a letter.

When I worked at CBS a generation ago I used to receive those letters. Sometimes we read them, and sometimes we answered them, but not always. Now if you see such a report and are enraged you can do something about it: You can argue in public on a blog or on TV, you can put forth information that counters the information in the report. You can have a voice. You can change the story. You can bring down a news division. Is this improvement? Oh yes it is.
...

Some media organs--Newsweek, Time, the New York Times--will likely use the changing environment as license to be what they are: liberal, only more so. Interestingly they have begun to use Fox News Channel as their rationale. We used to be unbiased but then Fox came along with its conservative propaganda so now just to be fair and compete we're going liberal.

I don't see why anyone should mind this. A world where National Review is defined as conservative and Newsweek defined as liberal would be a better world, for it would be a more truthful one. Everyone gets labeled, tagged and defined, no one hides an agenda, the audience gets to listen, consider, weigh and allow for biases. A journalistic world where people declare where they stand is a better one.

Couldn't have said it better myself--although I did try a couple of times.

Being a staunch conservative, George Will has never seemed like a big fan of Republicans when they actually wield power. Today's column explains why:

Just 10 years ago Washington trembled because many Republicans who had won in the cymbal-crash elections of 1994 had vowed to abolish the Education Department. Education, they said, is a quintessentially state and local responsibility. But soon Republicans in Congress and a Republican president were deepening Washington's reach into education. In 1996 Republican appropriators gave the department a 15.7 percent increase in discretionary spending. And No Child Left Behind increased federal education spending more than any increase requested by President Bill Clinton, who was the teachers unions' poodle. Some of that money went to Williams.

When conservatives break with their principles, they seem to become casual about breaking the law, too. Last year the then-General Accounting Office accused the Department of Health and Human Services of illegal spending when it distributed fake "news" videos that were used by 40 local stations around the country. In them the many benefits of the new Medicare prescription drug entitlement were "reported" by a fake reporter whose actual status -- an employee of an HHS subcontractor -- was not revealed. The English version of these "video news releases" concluded, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting."

This scofflaw enterprise was an appropriate coda to the lawless making of this law.

Read the whole thing.

As you've probably read in the last few days, The New York Times is leaning towards making their online operation subscription-only. It works for the Wall Street Journal, so there's probably no reason it can't work for the NYT, too. Problem is, how to get people like myself to pay for what we're used to getting for free?

In an article about a completely-unrelated subject, Slate's Bryan Curtis might just have the answer:

Here's an idea: As soon as William Safire shuffles off to the Old Columnists' Home, put [retired humor columnist Dave] Barry smack dab in the middle of the Times editorial page. Barry confessed a few years ago that he's a raving libertarian—just the kind of dyspeptic crank who would take pleasure in thumbing Washington in the eye. Give him 14 inches twice a week and let him write whatever he wants. Why settle for another graying libertarian when you can have a libertarian who makes booger jokes?

Oh please oh please oh please oh please oh please.

Right now, the closest thing the NYT has to a funny columnist is Nick Kristof - but I'm not sure he's ever been that way on purpose.

The launch went off without a hitch yesterday, but what does "Deep Impact" do?

The idea behind Deep Impact is as simple as it is surprising: to find out the inner structure and make-up of a comet, what could be more natural than punching a hole in it? That is precisely what Deep Impact will do, by sending an impactor crashing into comet Tempel 1 at a speed of 10 kilometers (6 miles) per second - about ten times the speed of a rifle bullet.

It's due to hit on July 4. I can't wait.

We really are living in a new Golden Age of auto design. I can't remember the last time so many cars got me so hot'n'bothered just on their looks. There's the Mercedes CLS "four-door coupe." The new BMW 6-series. The Chrysler 300C and its HEMI-powered Dodge Magnum and Charger cousins. And have you seen the '06 Corvette Z06? GM hasn't made anything that good-looking in 30 years. Hell, I'm even a fan of the chiseled Cadi CTS and XLR.

(Of course, even a Golden Age still has a little lead. The less said about the new Ford Five Hundred, the better. I think they named it "Five Hundred" because they needed something starting with F and "fleet vehicle" was already taken.)

OpinionJournal's Dale Buss explains the modern car renaissance:

With quality and functional differences among products largely having narrowed over the past decade or so, eye-catching design can be decisive. "Both consumers and the car companies are ready to see more chances taken out there," says Chris Chapman, director of automotive design for DesignWorks USA, a unit of BMW. "People are kind of sick of the same old thing, and they're looking for something new."

And we're getting it in spades, too. Just check out some of the goings-on recently in Detroit and Los Angeles. Even the Japanese are starting to make some cars that look as good as they're made.

I've drooled so much, in fact, that I've decided to retire the Sebring convertible later this year, while it's still young. (Four years old in May, just over 30k miles - if you're interested in buying it, say, next July.) Got my choices narrowed down to either a 300C SRT-8, or a new-model (and not overly-Bangled) BMW 330i. What to choose, what to choose? Raw American power and in-your face looks? Or precision German engineering and understated finesse?

And to think, those are those are just two of several fine choices in the mid-range of the near-luxury market.

This really is a Golden Age.

The indispensable Roger L Simon gets a tip of the hat for finding Norman Podhoretz's "The War Against World War IV" in the new issue of Commentary.

It's a long piece, so you might want to print it out for bedtime reading. But that doesn't make it any less required.

Here's a great Boston Globe article about the "Car Talk" guys, Tom and Ray Magliozzi (hat tip to Los Bros Judd). Way too many great quotes to pull anywhere near a representative sample, but here's a good one:

Ray: "One of the big chains approached us, but we didn't want to stand in front of their store and tell people to get their cars fixed there. We couldn't. Because they [expletive] everybody."

Berman: "Even though they offered them [a lot] of money."

Tom: "Offered who?"

Ray: "You didn't get that memo?"

Tom, puzzled: "No."

Berman: "These guys are not greedy. And the best negotiations happen when you truly don't give a . . . "

Tom: "Wait, back up. Offered who?"

Read the whole thing. And don't drive like my sister.

Top Ten Proposed Changes At CBS News

10. Stories must be corroborated by at least two really strong hunches.

9. "Evening News" pre-show staff cocktail hour is cancelled until further notice.

8. Reduce "60 Minutes" to more manageable 15-20 minutes.

7. Change division name from "CBS News" to "CBS News-ish"

6. If anchor says anything inaccurate, earpiece delivers an electric shock.

5. Conclude each story with comical "Boing" sound effect.

4. Instead of boring Middle East reports, more powerball drawings.

3. To play it safe, every "exclusive" story will be about how tasty pecan pie is.

2. Not sure how, but make CBS News more like "C.S.I."

1. Use beer, cash and hookers to lure Tom Brokaw out of retirement.

Martini Boy emailed me asking what I thought about the mini-Mac that was announced yesterday. Full disclosure: I've been a Mac owner since 1989, and I worked in Apple support for a few months in 1993 (in the Apple food chain, I was somewhere below plankton, but I enjoyed my time there). I use Windows and UNIX variants at work (and at home; I have a cheap PC, too), but I definitely prefer the Mac OS over both.

Anyway, as a public service, here's what I told Steve:

Personally, I wouldn't buy a "mini," but that's because I'm an engineer and a gadget freak. I'm always wanting to rip the cover off and tinker. Jobs hates