The Nerve!

.....of the President of France to walk out of a "60 Minutes" interview, or of the reporter to interrrogate Sarkozy about his personal life? Which answer is chosen might be a good litmus test as to one's generation, or how one regards the role of the Fourth Estate, or whether or not the media are at all relevant any more. A lot of things....and one thing the media hardly ever, ever does is roll over on its own....hence Breitbart TV's headline "French President Sarkozy Bolts From ‘60 Minutes’ Interview." Looked like he just took off the mike and walked out. I see "bolting" as exiting at a full gallop. He didn't want to talk about his personal life; why should he?

{Mind you, I am not suggesting there was any agenda in the character of the "60 Minutes" interview, stemming from the fact that Sarkozy is a pro- U.S. President who is establishing a hard line toward Iran. Given the sterling track record of CBS and "60 Minutes," certainly no one could harbor any suspicions that there might be a political agenda involved. I'm sure that if the former French President, Jacque Chirac, almost openly hostile to the U.S. and the Bush administration, had been involved in a similar divorce, I'm just sure "60 Minutes" would have conducted the same sort of interview. I do.....don't you?}

Ignoring Reality

A commentary in today's local paper embodied an impassioned plea that bicycles should be treated just like any other vehicle on the road. I could agree with this, except for the fact that......they're not.

A bicycle is:

1) Smaller than any licensed motor vehicle.

2) Lighter and extremely vulnerable.

3) Less visible.

4) Unable to keep up with even reduced speed limits.

5) Doesn't pay any road use taxes.

So- the proposal is, on the face of it, quite preposterous. This, however, doesn't stop it from being added to the long and ever-growing list of preposterous things in the U.S. and A. at the dawn of the 21st siécle. The ominous thing is that the list shows no sign of stopping its growth, and that therefore the collective state of denial that we appear to accept as the common "wisdom" in our culture nowadays grows ever-deeper.

Trolling for Tragedy

The fires have died down in California, the rains are done in the Southeast....where can The Weather Channel find the Disaster o' the Day? More and more, as with some other cable channels, there is an obsession with ongoing or putative disaster, and when there's not one one in the offing, their sense of direction is lost.

Wait! All is not lost! There's a large tropical depression building, so there's at least some hope of a hurricane.....

No Bottom With This Line....

Just when you think the depths of stupidity have been plumbed, you're surprised and delighted when some new idiocy comes to light. The incredibly intelligent administration at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign™ have been forced to rescind a ban on the logo of Chief Illiniwek™ in the homecoming parade. "The Chief"™ is the school mascot who was deleted this year after a 99-year controversy, the details of which are far too dreary to chronicle in these pages.
Now the dear Halls of Ivy™ finds itself in a predictable guerrilla war attempting to keep The Chief ™gone, while thousands of fans and supporters, complete with t-shirts, caps, mugs, keyrings, emblazoned vehicles, etc., pledge to keep him alive.
So- the first battle in the war was to determine the ownership and use of the logo. While the Big U™ has discontinued and revoked all license to use the logo, it retains Sole Ownership™ and must now fight the predictable and inevitable ad hoc battle to keep it suppressed.
The battle over the parade ban was spontaneous, but surely was equally predictable. How on earth all my university administrator acquaintances (of whom I have none), who live and die by all sorts of holy freedoms of expression 24/7/365, could have imagined that there would not have been a holy howl raised when they attempted to ban the logo in the homecoming parade must remain one of the great mysteries of this football season, if you don't count why the U of I™ plays Ball State. At all. (Ball State University, in Muncie, IN, dear old "Testicle Tech," the arch-rival of my alma mater, Indiana State is this year's victim for homecoming.) Wait! That's right....they've got the same season record. Illinois beat- Indiana. Ball State beat- The Southern Michigan Girl Scouts.

Real Wrath of God Stuff....

....cats and dogs, living together, what's next?

When they finished the last series of shows on The End of Days for the 2006 season, eliminating the human race via volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, asteroids, etc., I thought this particular lunacy might have run its course. Now we have Season Two: Black Holes, Gamma Ray Bursts, Prof. Little predicting the sky falling, and the like. Is this just how people adjust their heads to living in a world of diminishing expectations, or is it a full-blown mass psychosis?

Today I see there's a new episode: MEGA-DROUGHT!!!

....I'll drink to that.

No One Expects The Spanish Inquisition....

Don't like what you may hear on affirmative action? Suppress the evidence. Rather like what was done with Galileo's observations 400 years ago. Now California law students are a subject of controversy, not because the affirmative action candidates don't pass the bar exam -which they don't- but because data that would serve to corroborate the findings is being withheld by the U.S. Government.

If push comes to shove in this issue, anyone care to guess what the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (the agency withholding the data) will propose? How many guessed dumbing down the bar exam? Go to the head of the class!

This once again demonstrates that the most powerful force in the universe is not a supernova, or a quasar, but the human will to belief, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

Another one of "those" guys....

Today is the anniversary of the breaking of the sound barrier by Chuck Yeager. He is another of those members of that generation that is an example to us all. When they were having the ball celebrating the 60th anniversary of the event at Edwards AFB, Gen. Yeager was......breaking the sound barrier overhead, flying an F-16. What else?

Let's Have a Show of Hands....

Who doesn't realize that what is now termed "news" is more than 98% speculation and less than 2% information? That's the reason I deal almost exclusively with a pared-down Google Reader. Apparently General Sanchez does, however. Worth reading, although even the excerpt seems verbose.....when it comes to the fourth estate, I prefer Larry Niven's line: "You scream and you leap."

Explanation, please...

I have yet to hear a satisfactory explanation of the permanent state of political campaigning that has existed since the 2004 returns were announced. It's constant, it's long past boring or annoying me. The result is that I'm politically numb: I no longer care who's running, or who gets elected, etc. How did this start? How can we exterminate it?