The jury is still out on whether the SEC charges against the Wyly brothers were intended to run interference while Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) was facing the (light) music, but there remains a question of why Rangel isn’t up against an actual jury on his own account:

[W]hat is all this talk about deal with ethics committee? Is he guilty or not? Did he do these things? (he did, and more) Then he should be brought to court, made to return public & private money and sentenced according to law.

How come an ethics committee became a substitute for due legal process?

Why they have an authority to forgive or punish crimes on behalf of the people? Isn’t it a violation of constitutional principles?

When similar questions were posed here, I punted, pointing out that so far, no action had been taken outside the House of Representatives. The question therefore becomes: Could Rangel be charged with violations of federal law, outside House rules? A reading of the 40-page “Statement of Alleged Violation” [link autoloads a PDF file] indicates that yes, he could, though only for some of the specific counts.

Which leads to the next question: Would a prosecutor outside the House actually bring charges against Rangel for, say, tax evasion? Probably not:

New York State law classifies filing a false city or state tax return a felony punishable by up to four years in prison, but Kathleen M. Pakenham, a tax lawyer at the law firm of White & Case, said criminal prosecutions are rare and in most cases, the taxpayer is simply fined 20 percent of the back taxes owed. Under federal law it is a felony to “willfully” evade payment of taxes or file a false return, and sentences can include prison terms and fines of up to $100,000. But Daniel Goldberg, a tax law professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, said that the I.R.S. rarely pursued criminal prosecution or imposed fines in cases where no back taxes were owed.

So don’t look for Rangel to serve any time. On the other hand, I wouldn’t expect the authorities to cut you or me the same amount of slack.

As John Lennon never said: “All we are saying: give bullshit a chance.”

On the 22nd of July, I asked: “Can we make it to the two-millionth visitor by the end of the month?”

Well, no. But we only missed it by eleven hours or so:

It strikes me that this “unknown” ISP is one worth having, given SiteMeter’s manifest inability to determine anything from the IP address, which I have partially redacted.

And actually, I do know who this is — starting out with a Vent is a sure sign of a regular — but on a day when 60 percent of my traffic is coming from SurvivalBlog, I think it’s highly inappropriate to name names.

Incidentally, we went over three million page views yesterday afternoon.

I do thank all of you for dropping by, be it once or several hundred times, and I hope to see you again during the next million. (The first million was reached on the last day of March 2005.)

My laundry sorting tends toward the perfunctory: I don’t wear much white, before or after Labor Day, so I don’t pay much attention to colors as I load up the tub. (Fabrics, yes: I don’t want the socks with the slacks, because they take twice as long to dry.)

I hadn’t done any wash since the preceding Sunday, so the hamper was fairly full, and in it I discovered three red shirts. Not a problem for sorting, but I had to wonder: was I expecting to beam to the surface and die?

How hot is it? Nate caught this with his iPhone in Tulsa:

(Original here.)

As noted yesterday, some two million people have filed through the gates and into the wondrousness of this site. It is the function of this weekly feature to single out about ten who arrived bearing goofy search strings.

shooting down the walls of heartache:  Have you ever tried to shoot down a wall? Tons of ordnance, not much of a hole. Next time, try the pole vault.

slippery sidewalk in high heels:  Tons of liquid, not much traction. Next time, try the winter boots.

thora birch wears converse monkey trouble:  Not on slippery sidewalks, I bet.

churchs must study cience fiction:  See, for instance, Paul’s second epistle to the Cardassians.

the fashion has turned out otherwise:  See, for instance, Paul’s second epistle to the Kardashians.

a war where nothing matters:  ”Not dying” would seem to matter at least a little.

hot to tell if someone is a swinger:  Push ‘em. If they sway back and forth like a pendulum do, they swing like England.

pissed off apac customer service employees:  Have you listened to some of those customers lately? Sheesh.

opposite of hype:  Um, lope?

“not unlike the wind itself”:  Which phrase will come in handy if ever you see someone sweeping down the plain.

It’s a control thing, you wouldn’t understand:

Two Gulf states have announced bans on some functions of the Blackberry mobile phone, claiming security concerns.

The United Arab Emirates is to block sending emails, accessing the internet, and delivering instant messages to other Blackberry handsets. Saudi Arabia is to prevent the use of the Blackberry to Blackberry instant messaging service.

Both nations are unhappy that they are unable to monitor such communications via the handsets. This is because the Blackberry handsets automatically send the encrypted data to computer servers outside of the two countries.

You know who else would like to monitor communications? Yep. Just about everyone in a position of power, it seems.

The UAE ban is to start in October, while the Saudi move will begin later this month.

I expect workarounds to be in place rather quickly.

He made his happy sounds on Sullivan’s Island, and now he’s busted:

Town Council approved an ordinance last week that added whistling, hooting, hollering and singing on a public street to a list of potentially disturbing noises.

According to the proposed law, it would be illegal to yell, shout, hoot, whistle or sing on public streets especially overnight from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. or at any time or place if it’s annoying people nearby, in an office or in a home.

The place has obviously changed since Edgar Allan Poe was there:

This island is a very singular one. It consists of little else than the sea sand, and is about three miles long. Its breadth at no point exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the mainland by a scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh-hen. The vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of any magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort Moultrie stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings, tenanted, during summer, by the fugitives from Charleston dust and fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly palmetto; but the whole island, with the exception of this western point, and a line of hard, white beach on the sea-coast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of the sweet myrtle so much prized by the horticulturists of England.

Now that I think about it, it hadn’t changed much from that the last time I was there, which would be early 1969.

Of course, there’s an explanation for this:

[L]ike it or not, Charleston is a town of transplants. A destination town. A lot of expatriate New Yorkers, people from Ohio looking for a warm place to sit, and a bunch of escapees from Atlanta’s rat race. Mostly east coast people, though. I was once considered an oddity because of my California roots (although that’s considered to be plenty odd anywhere). Now, there’s a bunch more like me. Maybe I should apologize for kicking that door open; everybody wants to be the last person to move to a new area … write this down. People who move to another area tend to want a couple of things: First, they’re seeking a new life. And, once that’s achieved (or not), they seek to make that new town Just Like Home …

Or at least just like North Charleston, whose anti-noise ordinance was largely copied by the present-day island fathers.

(Inspired by this post by Fishersville Mike.)

FIBA, having presumably watched the World Cup coverage earlier this year, has already moved to eliminate one potential source of bother:

FIBA has banned the vuvuzela from the forthcoming basketball World Championship in Turkey.

The sport’s international governing body is urging fans not to bring the controversial instruments to games and warned that security staff will confiscate them. Supporters also face expulsion from the tournament’s five venues if they flout the ban.

However bad the Horrible Horns were at the football matches, they would be infinitely worse for basketball:

Patrick Baumann, the Secretary-General of FIBA and a member of the International Olympic Committee, said: “We want fans to enjoy themselves and make lots of noise but not at the risk of spoiling it for others.

“The vuvuzela is simply not appropriate in a confined space such as a basketball arena. It’s a very loud instrument and some medical experts believe the decibel level and frequency can be harmful to hearing.

“Besides our responsibility to protect the well-being of our athletes and fans alike, the sound level in an indoor sport arena could create communication problems between the referees and that could have a direct negative impact on the game.”

Regular visitors to OKC’s Loud City commented: “Huh? Wha’d he say?

Usually it’s kryptonite that besets the home of the Man of Steel, but not this time:

The uranium can be found at the Honeywell plant, located just west of town and, as is frequently pointed out these days, just upwind. The plant — an unremarkable, hulking mass just off the highway — has been around more than five decades. It rarely registers much of a thought here, except as a provider of hundreds of good-paying jobs handling dangerous material. That was, until June 28.

That’s when Honeywell locked out its 220 union workers over a contract dispute. The union of production and maintenance workers picketed outside. The company hired replacement staff. The plant ran in slow motion for weeks, staying clear of any difficult work. But Honeywell recently announced it plans to restart full production early this month.

Much of the replacement staff, says Honeywell, comes from the Shaw Group, an experienced nuclear-power operator, but some townsfolk — and apparently the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is watching the situation — are worried about something going wrong at the plant, what with all that radioactive material and all.

The Metropolis facility is the only one in the States that converts raw yellowcake to uranium hexafluoride. A similar plant in eastern Oklahoma, operated by Sequoyah Fuels, operated through 1986, then switched to recycling of depleted UF₆. The reason:

On January 4, 1986, Sequoyah Fuels Corporation experienced a rupture in an overfilled uranium hexafluoride cylinder that contained an estimated 29,500 pounds of gaseous uranium hexafluoride. The incident led to the death of a 26 year-old worker, James Harrison, and the hospitalization of 37 of the 42 onsite workers. Health care providers examined up to 100 people, many from the local community, for health effects and 21 were hospitalized for short periods.

That plant was permanently shuttered in 1993.

Martha O’Driscoll, a Tulsa lass born in 1922, might be remembered for playing Daisy Mae in the 1940 film of L’il Abner, in which she didn’t dress like this:

So far as I can tell, this still is connected with House of Dracula (1945), in which she plays Miliza Morrelle, assistant to the not-at-all-mad Dr. Franz Edelmann, sought out by both the Count and Larry “Wolf Man” Talbot, seeking cures for their respective, um, distinguishing characteristics. (If I remember correctly, it’s Talbot who gets the girl in the end.)

Philanthropic note: O’Driscoll left show biz in 1947 to marry Arthur Appleton, Florida-based breeder of thoroughbred horses and collector of art; in 1987 they built and endowed the Appleton Museum of Art in Ocala, now operated
by the College of Central Florida.

Motor Trend calls this one for the ladies in their New Car Buyer’s Guide. It’s the Volkswagen Eos ragtop convertible, and, says whoever was in charge of the one-line summary: “Your daughter will love it.”

Well, maybe. My daughter is not so BFFy with VW these days, having driven her Jetta into one of metro Kansas City’s craters d’avenue, following which she was presented with a repair bill that made her nose bleed. On the upside, she’s surely grateful for no longer having to deal with some of the craptacular vehicles from her past, including an early-90s Oldsmobile Bravada whose doors apparently could be opened only with burglar’s tools or divine intervention.

(Previous “Girlmobile” posts: this one and that one.)

Angela is swearing off the thong:

I’m still not sure if there ever is an age range in which wearing a slim strip of cotton up one’s bum is truly acceptable. Now that I’m turning thirty-six, well on my way to old ladyhood, it’s way past the time that it feels appropriate to wear dental floss as undergarments. I also realize that nobody, including me, wants to see a pair of granny panties. The problem, however, is that there seems to be only two ends of the spectrum: underthings fashioned out of spider web silk or underthings fashioned out of bed sheets. Neither one of these options is optimal.

And so begins the search for Suitable Underwear. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a bit of inexpensive experimentation:

I’ve definitely attempted the low end of the spectrum, standing in Target staring at the wall of sad, packaged panties, trying to talk myself into a six-pack of Fruit of the Loom. Here’s how the process plays out: “They’re bikini cut, that’s got to be okay,” I reason with myself. I toss the package in with the Swiffer Wet Jet refills, eye makeup remover, eight roll pack of Bounty, and $5 bargain DVD. I push the cart away from the undies section. I quickly stop short, say aloud, “Oh hell no!”, surreptitiously remove the offending package from my cart — ashamed to be seen with them — and shove the pack of over-dyed cotton back on the rack. Fact: Nobody wants to get busy with a girl in Fruit of the Looms, and frankly, no one should.

Well, if they’re using too much dye, you don’t want them trailing off your caboose anyway, just on general principle. Then again, one should not listen to me on this subject, since (1) I tend to render the plural form as “Fruits of the Loom,” by analogy with “attorneys general” (which is correct) and “Astons Martin” (which is not), and therefore obviously don’t know squat about underwear, and (2) I’ve bought basically the same drab (no, not olive drab) boxers for twenty years, and therefore obviously don’t know squat about underwear. Not that anyone expects any better from a guy as old as I am, but still.

A step upward, then:

I’ve tried buying low level “designer” undies: DKNY, Calvin Klein, and the like, and those are no better that the random brands I find on the rack at TJ Maxx for $2.99. I’m not willing, at this juncture in my financial life, to drop the kind of cash required to stock up on La Perla.

Now I have advised against the hyperexpensive stuff before:

I belong to the school of thought that says that expensive lingerie is good for show, not so good in actual use: Harvey, caught up in the sheer passion of it all, suddenly rips off Sheila’s antique lace, and Sheila, instead of thinking, “Oh, yes, take me, take me now,” is thinking “You miserable son of a bitch, I paid eighty-nine fifty for that.” To say the least, this is not the sort of thing that strengthens a relationship.

On the other hand, one should not listen to me on this subject.

Still, what’s a girl to do? I can’t in good conscience recommend she go commando.

“Nobody under 50 has any business writing a memoir,” said I. And this is one reason why:

Harper Collins announced today that Bieber is publishing a memoir with the colon-heavy title Justin Bieber: First Step 2 Forever: My Story that will be released in October. The book promises to reveal all the details of his “amazing journey to stardom,” a journey that, it should be pointed out, has lasted all of 16 years.

Well, it certainly seems heavy to my colon; I’m pretty sure I’d find this fairly indigestible.

Highly Hypocritical Disclosure: I have a copy of Debbie Deborah Gibson’s Between the Lines.

(Via The Other McBieber.)

Among other things, Mitch Miller devised the Greatest Hits album, which some view as a cynical way to repackage old material. With Miller’s passing this past weekend, it seems sensible — to me, anyway — to rerun my Mitch Miller article from December 2004.

It was probably too much to expect that Mitchell William Miller would have been a rock and roll fan. For one thing, he was born in 1911; for another, he studied the oboe at Eastman, inspired by Pablo Casals’ cello work, long, fluid melodic lines that melted into the air. By 1936 he was playing with the CBS Symphony Orchestra; he left in 1948 to take an A&R job at Chicago’s Mercury Records under VP John Hammond.

In 1950, former classmate Goddard Lieberson lured Mitch Miller back to CBS, this time to run A&R at Columbia Records; Miller brought one of his Mercury stars, Frankie Laine, with him. At Columbia, Miller’s tenure was a mixture of brilliance and banality. An example of the former: the invention of the Greatest Hits album. Johnny’s Greatest Hits, a compilation of Johnny Mathis singles, entered the Billboard album charts in 1958. It was still there in nineteen sixty-eight. An example of the latter: Frank Sinatra’s “duet” with Dagmar, “Mama Will Bark,” which was thrown on the B-side of a real Sinatra single, “I’m a Fool to Want You,” but still garnered enough airplay to make #21 on the charts.

That rock and roll stuff never did impress Mitch Miller much; “The reason kids like rock and roll,” he said, “is that their parents don’t.” He did have more than a passing familiarity with country music, though, and when Sam Phillips put Elvis Presley’s Sun contract on the market, Miller thought Elvis had enough potential to justify putting in a bid. And in one of the weirder ironies of pre-Beatles pop, one of Mitch Miller’s biggest stars at Columbia was, yes, Mitch Miller, who put nineteen singles on the Hot 100, including one Number One (“The Yellow Rose of Texas,” 1955). In 1960, the TV variety series “Ford Startime” gave him a one-shot special, titled “Sing Along with Mitch”; it became a series on NBC and ran for four years.

In the 80s and 90s, Miller returned to classical music, conducting the London Symphony on record, including a highly-regarded Gershwin collection — no surprise, really, since Miller had played with George Gershwin on his 1934 American tour.

But when I think of Mitch Miller, being the crass pop-culture sub-maven I am, I’ll probably remember his 1958 hit (it scraped the bottom of the Top 20) waxing of the Colonel Bogey March, the whistled tune that appeared in the film of Pierre Boulle’s novel The Bridge on the River Kwai, and which, contrary to popular belief, did not originally accuse Hitler of monorchidism.

Or something vaguely similar. Actually, my main email account is hosed up, as are several thousand others on the same server box, so I will not be responding to any reader queries via email, and comment moderation will of necessity be quite a bit slower.

Update: It worked! Within 90 seconds of posting this, the email was fixed. Although anything sent earlier today probably bounced.

On second thought, not even Monty Python would have come up with this:

Reverend Michael Land, 67, said Christians needed to adopt swearing in their everyday language because it is how Jesus would have spoken.

He said too many people put Jesus “on a pedestal” and failed to realise that he was poor, relatively uneducated and preferred not to mix with the elite of his day.

He added that the Church risked becoming out of touch with ordinary people if its clergy did not become “streetwise” and failed to use earthy language.

Asked for comment, Jesus said: “Well, I’ll be Goddamned. Temporarily, of course.”

(Via Christopher Johnson.)

Depending on whose estimate you want to believe, roughly half the 30 teams in the NBA are actually making money. One of those teams is the Golden State Warriors, which sold earlier this year for about a third more than anyone estimated, and by “anyone” I mean Forbes, which spends a lot of time analyzing NBA finances.

Also profitable: the Detroit Pistons. After longtime owner Bill Davidson’s death last year, ownership passed to his wife Karen, who has decided to sell. Forbes thinks the team will sell for about a third less than they think it’s worth:

As it relates to location, the Detroit MSA faced a 15.4 unemployment rate as of June 2010 compared to the national 9.5 rate. This would cause any potential investor to seriously question whether fans would continue to support the team at the level of avidity they have historically, especially given that the team is in major rebuilding mode and not likely to challenge the current Beasts of the East (Orlando, Boston, Miami) anytime soon.

Furthermore, in light of the climate of ‘guilt’ that surrounds corporate spending on sports sponsorships (especially in a city whose main industry has been the beneficiary of significant TARP money), a prospective buyer would be justifiably anxious over the likelihood of short term corporate support (e.g. buying luxury suites, paying for facility signage, etc…).

I don’t expect to see the Warriors in the playoffs next year either.

Still, Pistons attendance was off last year: the Palace of Auburn Hills averaged 18,751 paying customers, eighth in the league, which doesn’t sound so bad, but the Palace happens to be the largest of the 29 NBA arenas, with a capacity of 22,076. (The Warriors, in 11th place, sold 18,027 seats of 19,596 at Oracle Arena; for comparison, the 12th-place Oklahoma City Thunder averaged 18,003 out of 18,203 during the regular season.)

And there’s the timing issue:

[N]ot only is Ms. Davidson unlucky to be trying to sell the team during the current economic climate, but additionally she has to deal with the uncertainty of the NBA’s labor situation. With the current CBA set to expire after the upcoming 2010-11 season and with the prevailing sentiment being that without major player concessions — given that between 12-15 of 30 NBA teams reported operating losses last season — owners are poised to lock players out prior to the 2011-12 season.

This would of course also affect Golden State and any other team changing hands. (George Shinn’s deal to sell the New Orleans Hornets is seemingly in constant flux.)

On the upside, Ms Davidson also owns the Palace, so if the Palace and the Pistons go as a package deal, the new owner won’t have to worry about his arena lease.

Just breathing the syllables “e-card” will get you bounced by the spam filter around here, which usually means you’ll go unnoticed. Not so for the alleged “Dave Anderson,” who presented me with the following presumably-fake email address:

dervalkyrie-at-gmail.com

Der Valkyrie? Der?

Evidently Siegfried here is a little unclear on the concept.

Andrew Gilstrap, in search of redeeming social value in the classic-rock universe, finds, of all things, sound quality:

This stuff just sounds fantastic. Part of it is surely the Darwinian passage of time, in which less beloved songs fall out of the playlist, but just about any song you hear on classic rock radio sounds great. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s three-guitar attack is as clear as day. You couldn’t ask for a clearer sounding song than Heart’s “Crazy On You”, and all those Steve Miller hits coat the ears like honey. Maybe that’s one good thing that came from the massive studio bills that bands used to rack up, maybe no one knows how to mic instruments like they used to, or maybe it’s the price newer albums are paying for participating in the loudness wars. Whatever the reason, I’m hard pressed to think of many new recordings that have the warmth or dynamics that seem so plentiful in classic rock.

Shoulda heard ‘em on vinyl.

There seem to be exactly two recording techniques in use today: semi-minimalist and kitchen-sink. The latter needs no explanation: we’ve got 32 tracks, and we’re gonna use them. Often as not, they get used for people who fly in, play their few bars, and disappear again. But even if you have no guest artists, the temptation to piddlefart around with all those extra tracks is well-nigh irresistible. (Trust me on this one. In the middle 1970s, I had actual four-track recording capabilities at home. Things got thrown in just so I could see all four VU meters jumping around.)

Simplified recording techniques may yield better-sounding results, but better-sounding results may not necessarily be the goal. The quest for airplay usually results in something that sounds like everything else on the playlist, just so it will fit in better. And these days, everything else on the playlist is loud, louder, loudest: it is now understood that you cannot exceed 0 dB in the digital domain without horrendous distortion, so everything is cranked up as high as possible, with a hard limiter shoved in right below the distortion point. Dynamic range is conspicuous by its absence. And once we’ve compressed the life out of it, we compress it some more to save disk space.

Few things today jump out at you like the opening grooves of Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s Not Fragile LP. (This YouTube version almost manages to do it justice.) At no point do you have to wonder what’s going on: it’s all there, loud and proud but never blurry. Perhaps we can blame this on Randy Bachman, who sometimes wanted to play arena-rock hero and sometimes wanted to do Wes Montgomery licks; either way, he wanted you to hear what he was doing.

In Germany, says Jack Baruth, the derisive term “VoPo” was applied to the Volkswagen-Porsche 914 in its four-cylinder form:

With just eighty horsepower, this was not a rapid car even by the standards of the day, and it cost plenty of money. The original cars turned a 19-second quarter-mile, and that got worse once the big bumpers and smog equipment of 1972 arrived. By 1974, the 914 2.0 cost $6000 in an era when a 911S cost twelve grand and the almighty Carrera cost $13,500. Put another way … a 1974 Z28 could be had with ALL the goodies for $4500, and it would smoke a seventy-six-horsepower emissions-compliant 914 six ways to Sunday.

The 914s were branded strictly as Porsches here in the States, so it was essential that they be priced like Porsches. A few 914/6 models with a six-cylinder engine emerged from the venture, and so did something even rarer:

A flared-fender, balls-out variant, the 916, exists mostly in myth. Six were produced and only two hundred of those survive today.

God bless those aftermarket parts suppliers.

Incidentally, “Vopo” could have meant something else:

“As West Germany debated last week whether it should have an army, East Germany was unmasking one.

“Five thousand jackbooted, blue-uniformed toughs swarmed into the border districts to put down disturbances by farmers trying to save their homes as the Reds bulldozed a three-mile-deep isolation corridor between East and West Germany. The blue-uniformed men, part of a 100,000-man force, are called the People’s Police (Volkspolizei, or Vopos, for short).”

About which, Baruth snarks:

Oh, just the tone of that article (from TIME) makes me nostalgic for the days when American journalists kind of, you know, liked baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and freedom. Nowadays, the Times would probably “embed” somebody with the Vopos and he would enthusiastically shoot farmers while talking about the need for social justice.

This seems a bit unfair. For all we know, the journalist might actually be reluctant to shoot farmers.

No one seems to know why Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele is looking for meetings with foreign diplomats. When I first read about this, I assumed it was an extension of the Peter Principle:

Peter suggests that a manager who finds himself saddled with an incompetent employee has the ability to get rid of that employee without firing him. Peter suggests a lateral arabesque, or giving an incompetent employee a longer title with less responsibility. This way the employee still feels important, but is kept away from the flammable material, so to speak.

On the other hand, Steele is the chairman; how likely is it that he’d pass this judgment upon himself?

So there has to be something else at work here. In the absence of a better explanation, I’m going with E. M. Zanotti’s take:

[F]oreign dignitaries and diplomats can’t vote and definitely can’t give money to American elections. Steele should at least know that, considering my mom used to receive direct mail from the RNC during the Clinton years showing Al Gore surreptitiously taking game show checks from monks in China. Unless Steele’s planning on honing his connections so that once he takes over as President the transition is smooth (or, worse, trying to confuse the sh*t out of people who don’t speak English), we’ve got an unnecessary waste of funds here. Or, of course, he could just be forming up the Justice League.

Typical DC-centric approach. Where are the Avengers when we need them?

Mandy Vavrinak on Google Wave, last fall:

Without a mechanism to tell me something has happened, activity has occurred, SOMEONE WANTS MY ATTENTION, Wave feels like one half of a really great pair of shoes. Love the look, stylish, classy, hip! Feels great on… can see myself wearing them out and about… Goes with most anything… nearly perfect pair of shoes. Except I only have one of them.

My “new shoe” looks great, but without the mate of notification functionality it’s not very practical to actually wear (use). In the hyper-connected world that I live and work within, a better way to connect holds much promise and a definite allure. But I think Wave will never be the medium of choice unless it finds a way to successfully draw attention to what is happening in a user’s personal universe in real-time.

Rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, I am not particularly hyper-connected, but this seems quite a reasonable analogy; except for maybe (deedle, deedle, dumpling) my son John, nobody goes about with one shoe off and one shoe on, though I figure it’s just a matter of time before Lady Gaga gives it a try.

Speaking of time, Google Wave is out of it:

Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects.

I will be most distressed if I start getting bulk quantities of Wave invitations now.

Women’s shoes are not a high priority at Instapundit, unless they’re on sale at Amazon, so finding this statement from him was rather startling: “Are these actually the most ridiculous shoes ever, or just really, really ridiculous?”

Short answer: No, and maybe. There are worse shoes than this just about every day at If Shoes Could Kill. And I am generally inclined to cut some slack to Maison Martin Margiela, whose slouch booties these are, if only because they recently turned out some Cinderella-worthy glass slippers.

Still, why would Glenn Reynolds single out this particular pair of shoes for (admittedly mild) invective? He updated his post with the following Mark Behnke quote: “Forget the shoes Glenn, focus on the legs! Wowzers.” And Robert Stacy McCain has suggested that Reynolds is in fact a leg man, citing as evidence “the stems on Dr. Helen.” I’ll take McCain’s word for it, in the absence of any reason not to, but now I’m wondering if maybe the backstory here involves the InstaWife: perhaps she saw them somewhere and offhandedly said something like “How would these look on me?” And when he regained his composure — well, what else would he do?

Here on the Heat Island, it’s really hard for me to find any disagreement with Lynn:

I’ve always said that if I ever win the lottery I want to buy a square mile and build my house in the exact center of it so I would have a minimum of half a mile between me and my nearest neighbor but here where I am now is not bad at all.

I haven’t gotten to this point yet, perhaps due to my comfortable (all things considered) position on the block: smallest house, largest lot, therefore most substantial buffer zone.

Advocates of the Urban Lifestyle (Or Else) will of course be appalled at such attitudes, but then the name of their game is high density. (I’ve known a few who were indeed highly dense.)

And besides, there’s this:

[I]f the neighbors get out of hand I’ll just buy their houses too.

Then again, this might be a uniquely-Oklahoman viewpoint; in New Jersey, for instance, it would be cheaper just to hire someone to whack them.

Gwendolyn, in the past few weeks, has been suffering from torn boots, which aren’t at all good for her (CV) joints. The dealership offered to replace the boots for a mere $600. Now everything I’ve ever heard about CV joints is that replacing the boots is a stopgap measure at best; the proper way to handle this is to replace the entire axle, which gets you a fresh boot. Nissan, unfortunately, wants over $600 for a single axle; installing a pair comes too close to $1500 to suit my blood.

And then it hit me. I’ve had to have this done before, on my first Mazda. And the actual Mazda dealership was happy to install a rebuilt axle for me for $199. This was, yes, a dozen years ago, but the results were quite satisfactory, and I’m not emotionally wedded to OEM suspension parts anyway, so I sought out an independent shop, which installed a pair of new-to-me axles for a modest $350.

The lede as written:

Washoe County Sheriff’s Office investigators have gotten more information to help piece together what happened before a woman was found nude and injured Saturday in Hidden Valley.

The first reports:

On Friday, witnesses saw a white woman wandering in the Hidden Valley Hills with what appeared to be improper hiking attire, the sheriff’s office said.

I can just imagine a group of skinny-dippers being busted for “improper hiking attire.”

Special Bonus Problem:

Sheriff’s investigators do not believe this case is related to the attacks reported on women by the Reno Police Department.

Say what? The Reno Police Department is attacking women?

Well, what have we here? The 385th Carnival of the Vanities is titled “CoTVing while I think of a clever title to put here.” Now what kind of person spends that much effort on trying to think of a clever title?

Oh. Right.

This is an unused photo from World Tour ’04, taken on my little point-and-shoot 35mm camera, just a random shot from the side of the road. And the road? US 385, through a seemingly-desolate area of eastern Colorado.

AOL, the perennial internet powerhouse of the 1990′s, have spent the past ten years rebuilding their company, yet can’t shake a decade-long losing streak and continue to not meet already lowered analyst expectations. YOU’VE GOT FAIL.

(Linked to this.)

He’ll huff, and he’ll puff, and he won’t blow anything ever again:

Mona Casey’s 15-year-old son, Charles Gray, was found slumped over the air conditioning compressor outside their home. He died after huffing or inhaling the refrigerant right out of the AC compressor, investigators said. The refrigerant had displaced the air in his lungs, and Gray suffocated.

Charles Darwin, asked for comment, merely smiled.

It occurs to me that families of R-22 huffers might be the first non-trivial supporters of that twit who thinks we ought to get along without air conditioning.

(Via the Consumerist.)

Found on Yahoo! Answers:

I cannot reach “thepiratebay.org” on any browser after updating a computer I just reinstalled XP on?

In fact , it seemed it was just after I installed IE8 or net framework.
Wherew would I look for something that would blacklist a website from all browsers (Firefox,opera)??

And please,no one give me a lecture on “why I shouldnt download from them, or that is illegal, …….so was not getting off the bus for rosa parks, and no one thanks the 1000 guys in jail for it before her. If your one of them, I appreciate your time, but Ill figure it out.

Future politician. Bet on it.

The title gives it away: “Many felons don’t heed ban on guns.”

I mean, just imagine: criminals committing criminal acts! Whoever heard of such a thing? Apparently it’s a whole new concept in North Carolina:

[In June] Ricky Earlton Woods received a suspended sentence and was put on probation for receiving a stolen vehicle and felony breaking and entering.

On Monday, Greensboro police say, Woods accidentally shot his 13-year-old brother in the neck.

It’s not uncommon for convicted felons to carry firearms, even though they are prohibited by law from possessing such weapons, law enforcement officials say.

“But… but that’s illegal!” sputter the Bradyoids and their ilk. Well, duh. These are criminals. They break laws. That’s how they got to be criminals in the first place, y’know?

(Via Xrlq.)

For many years, I have given out basically the same advice to blogging newbies: read carefully everything I do, and then do the exact opposite.

I would, of course, be remiss if I didn’t mention some of the other advice out there, especially when Stacy McCain picks up on it and finds those passages most pertinent to his operation. And since McCain gets way more traffic than I do these days, I’m betting that (1) I can find something useful in that advice and (2) I don’t necessarily have to repeat what he says.

So, then, to Diana Adams’ “22 Traits of Successful and Happy Bloggers.” She’ll tell you up front that the list is not meant to be all-inclusive, which is a good thing from my point of view, since most of my traits are barely printable, let alone linkable.

This one I probably should keep around as a reminder:

I read my articles at least ten times before publishing them. It’s important to follow the accepted spelling and grammar rules. Successful bloggers are also meticulous editors.

From my point of view, one distinct advantage of rereading the piece before it goes live is that I never have to read it again. Regrettably, I don’t always catch every last error, though I’m generally quick to issue a fix.

There will be ups and downs in your blogging. You will have good days and bad days. You will have days when you just want to quit it all. Your commitment will carry you on those “off” days.

It also helps that I usually have a couple of pieces in the can, so if the words simply won’t flow, I’ll just change the date on one of those, and no one will be the wiser, except for that one time when I made reference to the trick-or-treaters last night in an item that was published in January.

It’s critical that your thoughts and what you are trying to communicate actually get to your reader in the way you intended. Communication can be tough because sometimes humor and little sayings that might make sense to you only confuse your reader. This is an important skill to develop.

Not to worry. I developed the skill to confuse the readers many years ago, and I get plenty of practice.

While searching for just the right photo, I happened upon this interview with Charlize Theron, and apparently her surname, at least at home in South Africa, is properly pronounced “Thrown.”

Not that I’d argue the point.

Oh, and she’s 35 this weekend. And this was actually my second-choice shot — Below the Beltway has already run my first choice — but the backstory on it is sorta fun. This is from her 2004 appearance on the German TV show Wetten dass, and that’s host Günther Jauch allegedly checking out a tattoo. If you say so, Günther. (Another shot here.)

When what you believe in seems to be crashing before your very eyes.

Linguistic bonus: use of the word “there” three times in succession.

Tim Cavanaugh at Reason.com, on Christina Romer’s departure from the Administration’s Council of Economic Advisers:

The ordinary function of government is to destroy talented people, but Romer’s epic failure has an additional element of tragedy. As an economist, Romer did an excellent job [pdf] of establishing that New Deal stimulus failed to end or seriously mitigate the Great Depression. As an Obama team player (and poignantly, a sunny supporter of the then-senator’s campaign), she made a 180-degree turn toward pro-stimulus hocus pocus. Romer will be remembered as the main advocate of the mythical “multiplier” phenomenon, in which every federal dollar spent producers more than 100 pennies worth of economic activity. This is the kind of economics you’d expect to hear from a fine arts major.

Maybe it won’t matter on the lobbyist/lecture circuit, but at some point a person must say, “I told all those lies and this is all I get for it?”

I can’t believe I didn’t come up with that for a T-shirt.

This spring, I discovered that the Shoe Girl had enough of an interest in neon-colored underwear to draw my attention. This week, she did something about it:

Some of you may remember that I was on the search for a neon bra a-la the always amazing Miss Gwen Stefani. (Click here if you’re drawing a blank) Well I finally found one at Victoria’s Secret! Yippee!!

The only problem was that it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for so I had to do some serious altering.

She wasn’t kidding about “serious altering,” either: she removed the lining from the sides because she was looking for more of a see-through effect, and apparently there was enough superfluous padding in the cups to stuff a mattress.

What struck me about this, though, is that she went to this much trouble on a bra from Vickie’s, which, while hardly the lowest occupant of the lingerie totem pole, isn’t exactly what you think of as a Garment for the Ages. Then again, I suppose one would not want to cut up La Perla at seven times the price, or even Wacoal at three. And I have to applaud the Make It Work ethic, since she did indeed make it work. (What’s more, she was kind enough to tell me about it.)

Two weeks from now, the city will take some of it off your hands at the eCycling Drop Off Event at State Fair Park. If you’ve got obsolete computer or TV or stereo equipment, haul it to the drop-off point on the 21st (8 am-4 pm), and consider it gone.

I suspect that since Free Landfill Day is coming up in September, this constitutes the city’s effort to make sure that all these electronics don’t end up buried and leaching toxic whatever into the ground.

William Falk writes in The Week (13 August):

Bill Clinton, Hillary, Chelsea, and Marc were at the next table, talking avidly over their dinner, and my wife and I couldn’t help but snoop. No, no — this wasn’t the big wedding last weekend; believe it or not, I was not invited. It was at a Mexican restaurant in the Clintons’ hometown of Chappaqua, N.Y., where we had met some friends. While we were perusing the menu, the former First Family strolled in. With an eye to his cholesterol intake, Bill ordered soup and vegetable fajitas. But as he talked and listened, the Big Dog kept reaching into the basket of tortilla chips, and absent-mindedly popped one after another into his mouth. Without a word, Hillary finally slid the chips basket down the table, out of Bill’s reach. It was the story of their marriage in a single gesture: Bill’s undisciplined yearning, Hillary’s vigilant determination to protect him from himself.

It is a measure of something, though what I’m not exactly sure, that this passage popped into my head while I read that:

The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn’t stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.

Now Bill Clinton isn’t exactly Huckleberry Finn, but the idea that one of the duties of woman is to civilize man is still around. A blunt statement to that effect, from Jonah Goldberg:

Female equality seems to be a pretty reliable treatment for many of the world’s worst pathologies. Population growth in the Third World tends to go down as female literacy goes up. Indeed, female empowerment might be the single best weapon in the “root causes” arsenal in the war on terror.

The reason strikes me as fairly simple. Women civilize men. As a general rule, men will only be as civilized as female expectations and demands will allow. “Liberate” men from those expectations, and Lord of the Flies logic kicks in. Liberate women from this barbarism, and male decency will soon follow.

I know this much: while I had definite jerk tendencies when I got married, I veered way over into Major Jerkdom when the marriage unwound, and I suspect the long way back to Merely Difficult would have been shortened a bit were there a second pair of hands to help push.

And you just know Chelsea was taking notes that night at dinner.

It’s a phrase I’m certainly never going to hear, but that doesn’t mean nobody ever will:

While many see no downside to being beautiful, a professor at the University of Colorado Denver Business School says attractive women face discrimination when it comes to landing certain kinds of jobs.

In a study released in the May/June Journal of Social Psychology, Stefanie Johnson, assistant professor of management at UC Denver Business School, found that beauty has an ugly side, at least for women.

Attractive women were discriminated against when applying for jobs considered “masculine” and for which appearance was not seen as important to the job. Such positions included job titles like manager of research and development, director of finance, mechanical engineer and construction supervisor.

“In these professions being attractive was highly detrimental to women,” said Johnson. “In every other kind of job, attractive women were preferred. This wasn’t the case with men which shows that there is still a double standard when it comes to gender.”

Farkers considering this matter speculated as to whether “the head researcher is a smoking hot chick,” which of course has nothing to do with the photo of Dr Johnson above.

What I want to know in cases like this is the assumed source of the perceived problems with these applicants. Is it the frustrated male underlings, who presumably will never, ever have a chance with her? Or could this be evidence for Morgan Freeberg’s theory of power and pulchritude?

There is a large, and perhaps still growing, contingent of mostly females who believe it’s quite alright for some among their sisters to be prettier than they are. And more powerful. Just not both.

(Note: Individual data points were chosen by Mr Freeberg. Your mileage may vary.)