Boyd

If you thought Balmer was bad, try Iraq. It's astounding how good Simon and Burns can make TV.

I advise against buying this book. It is so perfect that you will despair when it is done. It is not worth the heartache.

Update: Again, don't buy it. It's been 3 days and my soul is still crushed that it ended.

The guy who gives out his Social Security Number in those ads:

There's nothing to indicate my identity has been successfully compromised other than the one instance.

King:

I called Kornheiser, who told me he could still make a deal with the Post to allow him to write occasionally for the paper. But he was fairly fatalistic about the industry. "Newspapers aren't dying,'' he said. "They're dead. But was it a sad day when the guys who made the great buggywhips and the beautiful classic carriages saw the first cars rolling off the assembly line? No. It was progress.''

Noonan:

They never guessed, back in '86, how government would pay off! They didn't know they'd stay! They came to make a difference and wound up with their butts in the butter.

Sunday. Ormond Beach.



Monday. Fort Myers. Twins.

Hammond Stadium.



Batting cages beneath stadium.



Morneau.



Payne.



Jack.



La Russa.



Tuesday. Bradenton. Pirates.

McKechnie Field.



Bay.



Mauer.



Wednesday. Kissimmee. Astros.

Osceola County Stadium.



Batting practice.



Oswalt.



Sabathia.



Thursday. Lakeland. Tigers.

Joker Marchant Stadium.



Jack.



Leyland.



Pudge.



Rogers.



Sheffield.



Ordonez.



Cabrera.



Utley.



Friday. Somewhere in Georgia or South Carolina.

Shaving on vacation.

Seeing as how Obama won Mississippi last night, I wonder if Hill will offer to make him Secretary of State.

Here.

Episode 8 of Season 5 of The Wire is one of the greatest television hours of all time (of course you need to have watched all the others to make it so). Made the set up worth it and has got me thinking that maybe HBO's decision to cut the season to 10 episodes was more of the problem than Simon.

In protest of Elon's new admissions policy this year, Jack and I went to see A&T play for free at War Memorial.

As lacking as War Memorial was for minor league ball and its relatively large crowds, with a little money and attention it could be a premier facility for college baseball. The first step might be to replace the leftover purple Bats paint with dark green.

Obama is the iPod candidate - fresh, hip, endlessly customizable. Bet he'll manage the backlash pretty well.

My eight-year-old is on board. Got an Obama card in a pack of NBA cards he bought the other day. Thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Goldstein:

Normally, peer review is a valuable step in the publication of scientific research. Scholars submit new discoveries to academic journals, which, in turn, solicit independent experts to assess the reliability of the work. Answers Research Journal, a new "professional, peer-reviewed technical" publication of "interdisciplinary scientific … research," has streamlined this process by inviting the submitting scholars to suggest who should review their work...

The next-to-last page in this document is titled "Suggested Reviewers Form." The purpose of the "Suggested Reviewers Form," which is to be completed by an author submitting work to ARJ, is to "help the editor to recruit the proper reviewers."

Nice work if you can get it.

Belichick leaving the field before the game was over was one of the most pathetic things I've ever seen in sports. Pretty sure he stayed the whole time against Gibbs.

Sullum:

Bush...braved ridicule by reiterating his newfound commitment to pork-free balanced budgets. Even if we take him at his word, nothing he has proposed can undo the damage he did in his first six years.

Bush finally unleashes his inner fiscal conservative when it absolutely doesn't matter. Who could possibly be the constituency to which he's pandering? Is there anyone left in the Republican Party to fool?

Goldberg:

...the coldest execution scene this side of Abe Vigoda.

Hardin:

....as we got older, the game depended more and more on the adults. They controlled the fields and the leagues and the games themselves.

I started coaching Little League more than 20 years ago, and I can tell you the adults can ruin anything. Too often, the leagues become power bases for parents who can't get enough of it at the office or the PTA or the civic organization or the church. They don't nurture the leagues or inspire the kids. They rule. They govern.

Inspired by true events.

Omar Osama bin Laden: Um, Dad? Can we talk?

Osama bin Laden: Of course, I always have time for offspring.

OOBL: Been thinking about getting a job.

OBL: Excellent, my son. What are you wanting to do? Munitions? Planning? Recruiting? There are many paths to martyrdom.

OOBL: Actually, I was thinking of something a bit different.

OBL: Praise be to Allah. You are wanting to become a cleric. This is truly a glorious day.

OOBL: I was thinking of becoming an Ambassador for Peace.

OBL: ...

OOBL: It will be really cool. I will marry an old Brit and race horses across northern Africa.

OBL: ...

OOBL: ...

OBL: ...

OOBL: Are you not pleased?

OBL: ...

OOBL: ...

OBL: Obviously you are not understanding how difficult this will make it to instill dread in other terrorists.

Granderson on The Wire:

It's "Roots" for the hip-hop generation...

You can't praise this show enough. If you're not watching, you have only yourself to blame for The Moment of Truth.

AP:

Cook told jokes at the Sunset Strip comedy club for 7 hours.

The Cook in question would be Dane Cook.

Recently I've stumbled upon folks who believe man and dinosaurs co-existed.

Wieland:

The Bible’s account of the true history of the world makes it clear that no fossil can be more than a few thousand years old. Dinosaur bones give evidence strongly consistent with this.

These same folks go to great lengths to build web pages and publish papers and hold conferences to make it seem like they know what they're talking about. Unfortunately it appears that Kansas is not as isolated as one might have hoped.

Update: Texas arrives right on queue.

Sullum:

Under current law the estimated gap between the benefits retirees have been promised and revenue to fund them is $53 trillion, of which $34 trillion is due to Medicare.

Hitchens:

...I will on no account vote for a smirking hick like Mike Huckabee, who is an unusually stupid primate but who does not have the elementary intelligence to recognize the fact that this is what he is.

Saletan:

It may be true that today's God a human creation. But so, in a way, is today's evolution.

We're always making the mistake that the way it is is the way it's supposed to be.

I cannot even begin to describe the perfection that is this bourbon this year.

Romney:

I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers – I will be true to them and to my beliefs.

Some believe that such a confession of my faith will sink my candidacy. If they are right, so be it. But I think they underestimate the American people. Americans do not respect believers of convenience.

But what could be more convenient than having the same beliefs as one's 'fathers?'

Hitchens:

According to the admittedly very contradictory scriptures of the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth warned his disciples and followers that they should expect to be ridiculed and mocked for their faith. After all, how likely was it that God had decided to reveal himself to only a few illiterate peasants in a barbarous backwater? Those who elected to believe this stuff were quite rightly told to expect a hard time, and the expression "fool for God" or "fool for Christ" has been with us ever since. That concept has some dignity and nobility. Entirely lacking in dignity or nobility (or average integrity) is the well-heeled son of a gold-plated church who wants to assume the pained look of martyrdom only when he is asked if he actually believes what he says. A long time ago, Romney took the decision to be a fool for Joseph Smith, a convicted fraud and serial practitioner of statutory rape who at times made war on the United States and whose cult has been made to amend itself several times in order to be considered American at all. We do not require pious lectures on the American founding from such a man...

Godspeed, Dixie Beer.

First supermodels, now rappers. Just waiting on doctors to complete the trifecta and thus usher in an era of unprecedented dollar strength.

Passed a church today with a sign out front that read, "Pray for rain."

Interesting that some of us believe God is open to persuasion.

Update: Including the governor of the great state of Georgia.

Nordhaus and Shellenberger:

Constantly surprised and angered when people fail to behave as environmentalists would like them to, environment writers complain that the public is irrational, in denial, or just plain foolish.

Greenburg:

"People feel free to say about me what they think about lots of blacks," Thomas said in an interview in his chambers at the Supreme Court. "Because of the heterodox views I've taken, they have license to say it about me with impunity."

Noonan:

Khrushchev's trip and Castro's were all about propaganda, all about sticking it to Uncle Sam. And here's what happened: Nothing. Their presence hurt our country exactly zero percent. In fact it raised us high, reminding the world we are the confident nation that lets its foes speak uncensored. As an adult nation would.

You know where I'm going. Is it necessary to say when one speaks of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that you disapprove of him, disagree with him, believe him a wicked fellow and are not amused that he means to have missiles aimed at us and our friends? If it is, I am happy to say it. Who, really, isn't?

But this has been our history: to let all speak and to fear no one.

AP, via the N&R, September 2, 2007:

The team also released veteran offensive tackle Kenyatta Walker, who started 73 games in six seasons with Tampa Bay.

Hardin, September 9, 2007:

New teammate Kenyatta Walker is hated by Jenkins, a holdover from the days when Walker was a trash-talking offensive tackle with the hated Bucs.

bin Laden:

There are no taxes in Islam, but rather there is a limited Zatkast (alms) totaling only 2.5%.

Whoa. Who knew?

Taylor:

The correct federal response to this should be, "Too bad. You broke it, you bought it." Let the realtors, bankers, Wall Street sharpies, and—yes—the borrowers fight it out amongst themselves. Somewhere there is a market-clearing price for these assets.

Of course, the uber-nannies in the Bush Administration can't allow that. Instead they have opted to compound the problem by using federal assets to move in on the private mortgage insurance market and otherwise encouraging banks to forgive bad loans.

Nice effort. Thanks.

AP:

The then-No. 5 Wolverines 34-32 loss to the lower-division Mountaineers Saturday has sparked demand for Appalachian State gear among Ohio State diehards.

They'll be sippin' sumpin' tonight for sure.

Hardin:

Harvest time in western North Carolina has always been the busiest time of the year. That means long workdays and sippin' something on the front porch at night. That means the traffic slows, and the tourists go home and the fiddles start playing and people start getting ready for fall.

WTF? Might mean sippin' something out of the desk drawer during the day too.

Evans-Pritchard and Essen:

Jean-Pierre Roth, president of the Swiss National Bank, said market turmoil was far from over as tremors from the sub-prime debacle continued to rock the world.

"We're certainly not at the end of the story. There are question marks surrounding the development of the American economy," he said. "Something unbelievable happened. People who had neither income nor capital got credit with very attractive conditions. Now reality is striking back," he said.

Lohr:

“Hopefully, they will make it harder for people to buy houses in the long run,” Mr. Cossette said. “Maybe others can learn from this.”

Or maybe they can be smart enough to figure it out for themselves beforehand like Caserta. Let's not go out and limit everyone else's options just because you screwed up.

Same goes for lenders too. For those buying CMOs, there's a reason the rates are higher.

First, I was an Eddie guy. Then, I was a Dave guy. Now, I'm a Sammy guy. He's the only one of the bunch I can imagine spending more than five minutes with and not be bored out of my mind.

Benson:

...state recognition of property rights is required to achieve the most efficient use of resources, but only because the state is the primary threat to those rights.

Somin:

...politicians can appease voters angry about Kelo by passing laws to "reverse" it, while simultaneously avoiding the ire of development interests by not giving those laws teeth.

Franken:

"Where man is not, nature is barren."

I was explaining this to somebody the other day following her question of whether or not I was "concerned about environmental issues". To be sure, nature has always interested me on the very basic levels of aesthetic appreciation--the delicious solitude of the desert, the sanctuary of the Redwoods, the environmental lessons one can learn from a trip to the Monterey or Seattle aquariums. This is nothing, however, compared to the reverence I feel for the historical achievements of mankind. Blasphemy though it may be, I still find the Industrial Revolution infinitely more fascinating than the budding Green Earth Revolution. In much the same way I feel about the island of Manhattan compared to a Rainbow Gathering. New York is natural. A Rainbow Gathering or a Burning Man, on the other hand, is unnatural. One is a city that operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week--a natural outgrowth of the natural progress of human civilization. The other is a patch of desert that you have to pay a lot of money to get into so you can be natural for a prescribed amount of time until it's all over and you go back home to your "unnatural" cities and your "unnatural" jobs to make your "unnatural" money.

Bailey:

...productivity flourishes when people are free, safe, and justly treated. Dahl calls this the framework for prosperity.