In her first day as anchor of the CBS Evening News, Katie Couric broke the story that Vanity Fair would publish the first photos of Suri Cruise. Immediately after, Walter Cronkite made a note to himself to spin in his grave just as soon as he gets there.

What was a subdued, guttural thrumming suddenly becomes a glorious crescendo. It sounds like an angry, drunken bear being shot from a cannon.

Did the editors take the day off? Does Smith have compromising pictures of [Editor-in-Chief] Jean [Jennings]? What on earth is this supposed to mean?

[It] was itself little more than a frighteningly-fast Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit. (Frightening due to balance, not speed; suspension tuning was left virtually unchanged when the comfortable-at-all-costs Silver Spirit was given a Bentley badge and a blower, leaving the boosted Mulsanne with all the dynamic stability of a giraffe on mescaline.)

[P]eople like the idea of self-publishing, but it's a lot of work. Some people just get burned out real quick, thinking they're going to get famous or thinking they're going to make lots of money.

I'm a man, so I'm not supposed to have an opinion about abortion. Instead, let me tell you about the wonderful morning I had yesterday, taking my 2-year-old daughter Dot to speech therapy and physical therapy. Her major interest right now is reciting the colors (which she does in English and American Sign Language, yet) and reciting the names of her boyfriends in her early start toddler class ("Edgerrrrr! Androooo!") and informing me they wear "backpacks." She waved at everyone she saw that day with a cheery "Hello!" and smiled a gap-tooth smile under her mop of red hair. They smiled and waved back. What a cutie!

Oh, sorry — she has Down Syndrome. Reboot. Let me try again:

Bringing her to term was obviously a big mistake! What a tragedy SHE is! How inconvenient for everyone involved! We can't possibly get her into advanced placement classes, or an Ivy League college! What'll we say to our neighbors? Better off just to make the "hard decision" to get rid of her. Ignore my first paragraph. Just forget I said anything...

This really is a lovely post.

I think it's worth pointing out, though, that raising a child with special needs is tough (and I know, all children have special needs — but therapy multiple times a week, infant hospitalization, etc. are certainly somewhat unusual). There are many people who simply don't have the resources to deal with that, and many who, as you point out, probably feel overwhelmed at the prospect of raising a special-needs child. I think it's important to promote institutional assistance, like you have in California, for families with Downs kids or kids with other disabilities. I'm very pro-choice and believe that women should always have the option of terminating their pregnancies even if we don't like their reasons, but part of the pro-choice position is giving women as many options as possible. Support for children with disabilities is a key part of that.

Call me an old-fashioned little-"d" democrat, but I'm willing to leave moral and ethical judgments about an official's personal conduct to the wisdom of crowds — the electorate, in this case.

Through their democratically selected Republican representatives, let the citizenry decide whether Hastert should stay or go. In fact, I wish Mr. Foley had chosen to be judged by the people of his district in Florida, rather than hide behind a smarmy, lawyerly "I was drunk and molested" defense.

A Democrat involved in a page-related sex scandal a few decades ago, gay Congressman Gerry Studds, stood before his voters and was repeatedly returned to Congress. His straight Republican colleague, Dan Crane, who had sex with a female page, was fired immediately by those who had sent him to Washington. Gay Democratic Congressman Barney Frank and gay Republican Congressman Jim Kolbe both won approval of their constituents after they were outed while in office.

In all those cases, a crowd casting ballots probably showed more wisdom than some House "ethics" committee or "independent" counsel could ever muster.

The problem Mr. Hastert is facing is not ABC News or liberal Democrats. It's a significant number of [his] party's base voters, who appear to despise gays and lesbians, and who demand that the party accept their bias as a legitimate "religious" belief. And it's also many — I think a majority — of those pesky voters in the center, who conclude Republicans are more than a little bit intolerant and are being a tad bit hypocritical.

As a Democrat, albeit a libertarian Democrat (there are about six of us), I side with the view that men are indeed canines, but it's a lot more important for congressmen to decide whether to send 18-year-olds to their deaths in the desert than it is to monitor whether dirty old men are sending "what are you wearing" instant messages to 16-year-olds at the beginning of the sex-sophisticated 21st Century.

Foley, a Florida Republican, quit after ABC News confronted him about lurid messages sent over the Internet to teenage, former male pages.

I think I'd just commit suicide.

Not all chemicals are bad. For example, if we didn't have oxygen and hydrogen, we wouldn't have water, and water is an essential component of beer.

Why would you expect the very people who made you slaves to save you?

Much of northeast Oklahoma City, formerly the geographic heart of the black community, is no longer owned by blacks, said John Pettis of the Oklahoma Housing Finance Agency.

"Until we go back to owning this community, we can't determine its destination," Pettis said.

Parents have to regain control of their families, discipline their children and instill character and morals, said Wayne Reid of the Eastside Capitol Gateway Main Street program.

"For so long, we've allowed the community to raise our children, then we wake up one morning, and we don't know who that person is in the house," Reid said.

[T]he young guy’s pretty bad about that. He was a second round pick, so he always uses that as an excuse when it comes to picking up the tab. And guys are always on him, you know, maybe he’ll take care of one sooner or later. But I’m hoping this year he steps up his game at the dinner table.

"I think the real Person of the Year ought to be Nancy Pelosi, the new speaker of the House. She worked for years putting a strategy together, building a huge coalition. She held the Democrats together in the House like I have never seen before. She is going to change America!"

Frankly, I've never understood why people feel they need to be taught how to have sex. It's fairly easy: stupid people have it all the time. It's a pretty basic evolutionary mechanism.

The messages are becoming increasingly vague and noncommittal. Forget Merry Christmas — they now wish you happy holidays, joys of the season, or a very jolly time. Any day now, I expect to receive a card wishing me and mine a very successful fourth quarter.

The handling puts the abyss in abysmal. There’s so much torque steer that it’s a constant battle just to keep the car pointed in a straight line. Even a minor stab at the go-pedal triggers the tiller’s disapproval. Turns are just plain awful. Moving left and right is a multi-step affair. First, turn the wheel. Second, wait for the vehicle to fully lurch over onto one of the front springs. Finally, sit in terror as the weight is unloaded and the car leans all the way back in the other direction, maybe (or maybe not) aiming where you pointed it.

Improbably enough, the ride is even worse. With the Sebring's short wheelbase and lousy suspension, bumps aren't just felt, but profoundly understood. A choppy stretch of pavement can induce sensory hallucination; I swear a tiny man with a jackhammer was attacking my kidneys. And the pizza box thick (and flat) seats lend no support whatsoever. I will testify under oath that the engineers responsible have never driven a car in their lives.

You know, I'm pretty sure the phrase "Life's too short" doesn't exist in Islam.

[A]t around 2 gig per movie, my iPod will hold "only" about 40 movies ... but that assumes that I don't want to carry any music or photos. Thus far, I can do without the latter, but an iPod without tunes is like a day without rutabagas, IYKWIM.

Payless was once attractive to slackers, which may be why you noticed the logo change. When I was living in Allston, Massachusetts, the Payless Shoe Source on Harvard Street was a cool place in a negative sense, which gave certain people an excuse to shop there. It was an acceptable way to buy new things for people who didn't want to be perceived as buying new things. Then the internet came along, just as the culture was becoming more grasping and whoreish — and with the internet you can get whatever you want quickly. Now people will have one used item in their outfit — not used but "vintage" — just to show they're not lame. And that item will sometimes cost hundreds of dollars. Back in those shopping-at-Payless days, my girlfriend used to go to the AmVets or the Salvation Army ("the Sally") or the Goodwill ("the bargie," for "bargain store," pronounced "boggie" if you’re from Boston) and she and a lot of other people had their day — "I go on Tuesdays." But now you can go on eBay and get exactly what you want whenever you want, instead of going once every week to a thrift store and just hoping, and the result, curiously, is that people look more the same now than ever.

Yesterday was International Internet-free Day. Ironically, I found out about it via my RSS reader a day late.

Q.: Why did the anarchist cross the road?

A.: "Who told the @#$!ing state it could build a @#$!ing road across my path!!??"

Ultimately, the failure of U.S.-based carmakers is an indictment of our ADD population; we have developed a system which rewards short term gains and fails to focus on the strategic value of the product or service offered.

Why would a young person in America become an engineer, an architect, a journeyman tradesman or even a doctor when those who are seen as "successful" in our system, and who are highly compensated, are those who actually produce nothing? Goldman Sachs partners split nearly 10 billion in profit last year; what is the product? Tort attorneys skim billions from the U.S. economy; what is the product? Real estate brokers routinely outperform builders, yet still have no product.

Until we as a people decide to change this system, the cancer afflicting American products and services will continue to spread. GM, Ford and Chrysler are simply highly visible tumors on our dying national will to thrive as an economy.

The name, of course, refers both to the chaotic 1934-35 retreat of Communist forces and the later consolidation of power by Mao Tse-tung's cadres over the antirevolutionary Western-leaning Chiang Kai-shek. It also refers to the formidable hike that awaits all MG owners who try driving long distances. Based on the most recent MG TF, the Long March is mildly redesigned with narrower headlights, optional pagoda roof, and Supplemental Active Restraint System (SARS).

For power, the means of production is a 2.5-liter gang of four making 28,275 BDARCORFP (Brake Disgraced Anti-Revolutionary Cadres on Re-Education Farm Power) at 6800 CRPM (Cultural Revolutions per Minute). Lubrication is by the sweat of the masses, and sequential-shutoff injection ensures that each cylinder receives fuel according to its needs and generates power according to its abilities. As Nanjing eschews rubber cam belts, the top end has nothing to lose but its chains. Balance shafts were rejected as decadent and counterrevolutionary.

Whenever some teenage wannabe anarchist revolutionary type goes out and protests against "capitalists" and "corporations" and "globalization", all while sleeping safely at night in the shelter of his parent's 4 bedroom home, he's engaging in a particularly safe kind of "rebellion."

He can "rage against the machine" all he wants, knowing, at least on a subconscious level, that the "machine" is what gives him the affluence and the free time to do all his "raging." And also knowing that despite all his "raging", the "machine" not only considers him less bothersome than a fly, but that the "machine" will still be there after graduation when he cuts his hair, takes out his piercings, covers up his tatoos, puts on a suit and goes straight to "the machine" for his 50k management trainee job.

And all the while, as he's doing his "raging" he can posture as a dashing and dangerous revolutionary hero-of-the-people (and score some primo hippie-girl poontang while he's at it).

I'm darned tired of wine snobbery. Wine should taste good. It's that simple. You don't need to know how to swirl a glass, or inhale the vapors as the wine sits on your tongue (that little pantomime makes you look like a demented fish, anyway). All you need to know is, do you like it? If not, it's a bad wine. If so, it's a good wine. And who the hell cares how much it costs?

When I walk up to your counter and say "Good sir, I would like to see that Euroshooter 55," I don't want to hear "Damn, honey, you don't want one of those. We had those in the 'Nam, and they got all of us killed. Why, I was killed five times because my Euroshooter jammed, plus the bullets just bounced off Charlie and actually made him stronger when you hit him. They're crap. You want you one of these here Thunderzappers! That there's a real gun!" Aside from the fact that calling me "honey" causes me to have to fight down the urge to shoot you in the kneecap, if the Euroshooter is such a crappy gun, then what in the hell is it doing in your showcase? Does your employer know about your scintillating sales pitch? I know that if I heard that in my shop, you'd be out checking to see if Wal-Mart had any greeter's slots open within the hour.

Disagreeing in text form with something someone else has typed is not "silencing." To pretend that's the case is pretty much the same thing as belittling actual instances of silencing — ya know? The kind where tyrannical governments murder people and destroy evidence?

Look, y'all. The internet is broken down as follows: 70% porn, 10% pictures of cats, 9% MySpace, 5% YouTube, 5% useful information, and 1% blogs.

That, my friends, is not the make up of a battlefield.

[I]t isn't so much the mindless racist language that Imus used in making his "observation" that bothered me, but the reason that he considers the Rutgers women worthy of verbal denigration. In the minds of some men — men like Imus and not a few rappers — the Rutgers women committed a cardinal "sin": not being physically attractive to that man personally. And, in spite of all the personal accomplishments of such women, this makes them fair game for scorn, whether couched in racist language or not. And, for that alone, Imus deserves the shunning of the magnitude that he is receiving.

If black Americans in 2007 are this delicate and overreact to the slightest insults with this much unrighteous indignation, it's pretty safe to say black people are not made the way they used to be, of stronger stuff, able to withstand truly demeaning and criminal treatment at the hands of true oppressors. It's sad to know that the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of people who faced actual oppression are so much weaker, much less discerning, and much more undignified.

Did your children celebrate Lenin's birthday in school last week?

Don't answer "no" right away.

The first Earth Day "teach-in" was celebrated on April 22, 1970, to protest the Vietnam War, pollution, and littering — and to commemorate what would have been the 100th birthday of one of history's most notorious villains.

As the father of communism, the deaths of tens of millions of people can be laid at that Soviet dictator's doorstep. That now forgotten fact about Earth Day's origins should place your child's sudden enthusiasm for recycling, saving the panda bears and energy efficient light bulbs in a new, well, light.

Like the Marxist philosophy that inspired it, today's environmental movement has become, for its most ardent proponents, an ersatz religion. As Joseph Brean recently observed, "in its myths of the Fall and the Apocalypse, its saints and heretics, its iconography and tithing, its reliance on prophecy, even its schisms — the green movement now exhibits the same psychology of compliance as religion."

There's plenty of balkanization out in the world, especially since the end of the Cold War. Every village in the former Soviet Union or Yugoslavia wants to have statehood now, and all that it does is create a multitude of warring little tribes, jealously guarding their little patches of ground against encroachment by "the others", whether those others are defined by clothing, language, face paint, diet, hygiene habits, or whatever name they choose to call their deity.

We don't need that kind of petty shit in America. It's divisive and destructive, and it does nothing but perpetuate neolithic tribal warfare. Here in the United States, most good and decent folks don't give a hoot whether their neighbor is black, white, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or Great Pumpkin worshiper, as long as he minds his own business and keeps his hands to himself. America is not a funny outfit, or a chant, or a collective of ancestors. America isn't a religion, or a skin color, or a language, or a way of cooking, and anyone who claims such a thing deserves a swift kick in the ass and a ticket to whatever homogeneous country best suits their personal desires for uniformity of pigmentation or religion or diet or what-the-fuck-ever.

[I]t is the nature of the Spirit to hide in plain sight. That is, the Spirit avoids what men would find seductively intriguing. The Spirit avoids the "corridors of power."

Let's face it, the Spirit has a puckish sense of humor. If in 1960 someone had told you that a music was soon coming that would capture the world's imagination and even fundamentally change the world's culture, would you guess that music would be coming out of Liverpool, England?

Astronomers say that if you want to see a star clearly with the naked eye, it's best to look a little to the side of the star. Then the star comes into clear focus. I'm not sure if this applies here, but I do think it interesting.

Here's one of my own coinage: You're more likely to find a quarter on the sidewalk by not looking for it as you are by actually looking. I think this also probably applies to finding love. In either case, anxiety will be kept to a minimum.

Everyone worth dating is already dating someone and has since at least 2005, maybe even 2004. I don't say this to be mean, it's just fact (hey, I'm in this group too). Back in 2005, I had a boyfriend and didn't know I needed to be looking for a new one. Also, marriage is the new black. I thought the idea was to wait till you've found yourself and shit. How come everyone's scrambling to tie the knot now? Medicine keeps getting better and better. We're going to live for a long time.

I was thinking about the shootings today — in particular, the reason why people choose to go crazy in the places they do. I understand the Columbine shootings because the kids who attended the high school directly outcast Klebold and Harris, but why colleges? The Dawson College shootings last year in Quebec performed by that stupid goth guy and this one today make me wonder why people choose colleges? People in college don't really pick on certain people, and there's no real hierarchy — there's no one specific group to blame for your anger! Not only that, but probably more importantly, it's cliché. School shootings are stupid for their own good reasons, but this idea of choosing educational institutions is getting old. Why?! Why schools? I'm not against flipping out and shooting a bunch of people, but make sure they deserve it. Why doesn't anyone go shithouse and shoot up the Westboro Baptist Church during a Sunday sermon? (Or better yet, during a protest at a gay troop's funeral.) Why not storm into a war profiteering corporation and shoot up their CEO? For the love of God, there are so many more people that deserve to be killed other than people trying to get an education. Go to Alabama and just start shooting. You'll probably hit someone that deserves it, and they'll probably have guns themselves, so you won't have [to] end up popping a cap in your own head when you're done with your rampage.

BTW, when I go on my rampage (and let's be honest, I probably will) I'm going to do it at a zoo because I want everyone to know that I'm that fucking crazy. I'm going to kill a giraffe and machete a gorilla in the throat. I'll throw myself into the eagle cage for my suicide. Because, metaphorically, it means America killed me. And you know what? I'll die fucking famous and crazy with the best Wikipedia entry ever. Because let's face it, we're all going to judge our life by the Wikipedia entry we leave behind. And I want my "Tom Goes to the Mayor" icon on my tombstone.

You can read the post and understand why it raised concern, but you can also truly understand what I wrote and discern that I was speaking against violence and that I was being my strangely humorous self again. Dell HR did not see it this way, and I am now no longer employed by them. I was never given any official policies regarding blogs; all I knew was that any Dell documents marked "Confidential" and personal customer information shouldn't be spoken of outside of company facilities. Although the post was written before I was employed with Dell, that it mentioned shootings, and that I made an obviously tongue-in-cheek reference to me going on a rampage at a zoo … a zoo … where animals are kept; Dell regarded it as a threat to safety. I'm not sure what their investigation included over the past few days, but I wonder if they really have a better understanding of me because of it. Did they look at my criminal history — which only includes some speeding tickets? Possibly. Did they call any of my friends, family, or past and current co-workers? Probably not. If they had, I wouldn't be here writing this because I know my friends and co-workers know that I'm a pretty good person.

So here I am — a person who's done right his entire life. Never done drugs or been drunk because he listened to the DARE officers in grade school. A person who's made it a priority to maintain a good credit rating so he can achieve "The 'Merican Dream" and buy [a] bunch of crap for his own happiness. I try to learn everything I can about technology so I can move higher and higher up the technology career ladder. But I'm crazy in the eyes of some corporate HR people. I have a bachelor's degree in Philosophy. I spent four years of my life studying ethics and morality, yet I'm regarded as someone who might not have value for human life.

Fire up the engine and the SportCombi reveals its heart and soul. Unfortunately, it's the heart and soul of a squirrel with pneumonia.

Provided you don't mind listening to an automotive impression of a cement mixer churning a bag of bolts or wrestling with torque steer for 7.4 seconds, she'll sprint from zero to 60mph handily.

I have a real problem with this bomb not going off. Being an engineer, I favor things that work. Ineptly designed and constructed bombs are embarrassing. They demonstrate a lack of seriousness and poor craftsmanship that seems to be pandemic in the world today. Non-functioning bombs are a sort of "canary in the coal mine" indicator for general societal dysfunction.

Walk into any Home Depot and observe the customers for a while and what I'm saying will become readily apparent. The majority, unless they are tradesmen, don't have the slightest clue. It's really a wonder that they managed to drive their cars to get there.

50 years ago this wasn't the case. The males in our society were expected to demonstrate a certain level of mechanical competence. People changed their own oil in their cars. Having to take a car to some mechanic to have a busted fan belt replaced would have been considered embarrassing in most social circles. Decades ago, at an early age, our males were constantly exposed to information and experiences that built a modest level of competence even among those who would eventually become white collar office workers.

To a large degree this is gone today. To a large degree, society is indeed choosing to suppress this competence in our youth. How many towns have laws now that prohibit you from keeping a "junk car" around? Most of them. Junk cars, aside from being junk, were/are wonderful mechanical training grounds for youth. People don't need 10 of them, but one isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Strategy Page notes that the "A TEAM" is dead or in Gitmo, so you are left with wannabees who don't hold jobs, study religion rather than mess around with cars in their back yards or fix machinery.

Le Guin clearly prefers Indian culture (especially that of the California tribes she grew up being told about by her anthropologist father) to that of her own people. She has one of the worst wannabe complexes in the country. (I wonder if the fact that Ward Churchill has actually had a successful career as a pretend Indian drives her nuts.)

This leads me to another Le Guin topic. A couple of years ago, the SciFi channel did a trashy miniseries based on her Earthsea Trilogy book. It was clear from the trailers that it was going to suck, so I gave it a miss. Le Guin hated it, of course — but the funniest reason she had for hating it was that they didn't hire Indian actors to play the parts of the Earthsea-ers, all of whom (except for the Kargad, who were a blond, white, Viking-like tribe) she had described as being brown-skinned and black-haired (though the fantasy culture she cooked up for them was clearly European; castles, merchants, prices, wizards, etc.), and revealed were her way of writing about her beloved Indians in her favorite genre. Though except for skin color there was nothing remotely "native American" about any of the fantasy people in the novels. This is a turnaround of the usual liberal/progressive argument that actors can play anyone no matter their skin color — we can have an all-Chinese cast do Macbeth in clown suits and speaking Gujarathi and it will be just as profound and meaningful as in Richard Burbage's day. It's funny how, suppress it how they may, the Judeo-Christian underpinning to a multicultural academic's worldview will pop out.

The theory taught in graduate schools of modern literature is like mortadella: it's expensive, imported, beautifully packaged, made with loving care by experts who have devoted their lives to their work and do it very well ... but it's still bologna.

[R]ather than assuming that all professors have plenty of brilliant ideas in them that they will be able to research and write about when given a sufficiently light teaching load, the assumption should be that professors will devote their time to teaching unless an outside party thinks highly enough of some research proposal to buy their time from the university.

I have little truck with a large majority of what passes for the academic elite these days — and I'm especially scornful of the entire concept of collegiate tenure — but there is sufficient intellectual spark in the ashes of my brain to believe that the expansion of knowledge should not have to be commercially attractive in order for it to be nourished and nurtured.

Imagine if Mozart had been a tenured professor of music at the University in Vienna — would you have insisted on him teaching freshmen students the principles of harmony and composition for three hours a day? And let's be honest again: brilliant people are often lousy teachers. Why burden them with a task which, in the end, benefits nobody?

I'm generally in favor of finding a decent compromise between two extremes; but in this case, between the extremes of "commercial appeal" and "academic navel-gazing", I'm tugged far more towards the latter than to the former.

No matter how much the system is abused by the mediocre, the slothful and the incompetent.

"Personally," [said Thomas], "I think knowing he won't be let out until he's done some work is almost more important."

"That's nonsense," I said. "If it doesn't come right psychologically — from the depths of father — it won't come right at all. You can't trammel the creative mind."

"Why not?" said Thomas. "His creative mind's been untrammelled for years without doing a hand's-turn. Let's see what trammelling does for it."

I've been covering the medium for Slate for two years, and of all the questions that have come from friends, family, and e-mail strangers, the most interesting is, "What should I name my blog?" Whether you plan to write about food, your miserable day job, or a viable exit strategy for Iraq, the answer is always a negation: It's more a matter of what not to name your blog. When CNN calls to ask for your expert opinion on farm subsidies, do you really want to be known as the Intrepid Ploughman?

Shakespeare's Sister, the blogging name of Melissa McEwan, is a tip of the beret not to Virginia Woolf but to Morrissey, which is almost a distinction without a difference.

Judging by the fact that you failed to recognize the value of certain items prominently displayed and left unmolested, I learned several things about you: you are amateurish or perhaps simply unintelligent; you were in a hurry and therefore, probably desperate; you are not afraid of heights, as I am, for you went down a fire escape from the seventh floor; you are stunningly unobservant: directly beneath the computer you stole, one could not fail to see two illuminated books: the Pentateuch (a book in which it is famously written, "Thou shalt not steal") and the Gospels and Acts (in which it was written, "Then [the criminal] said, 'Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.' / He replied to him, 'Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise'."); I would not be surprised to find out that we are similarly afflicted: I imagine that you have gotten a little fix at my expense. If that is so, may it be your last, and I mean it in all sincerity; I was once in the grips of addiction and suffered strenuously and manfully. In my freedom, I desire the same freedom for others; were you to come to me and say, "Teach me a way out," I would gladly invite you in, friend, and tell you how I was shown the way.

The old grandmas had it right: men will not buy milk they can get for free. And they won't even use that money they saved to buy their orgies with one-legged, HIV-positive dwarf tranny hookers, and meth; they'll put the all-night crotch party on your credit card and use the saved cash to buy a new Cadillac Escalade. My fellow females, men will never be honest again until we tell them "no" and keep on telling them. What's the worst that can happen? Men will all catch AIDS from crippled dwarf tranny hookers and die? Not all of them will. True — the ones left will probably be Christians but I think we ladies can put up with that slight flaw.

Back in the day when I was in school, you weren't taught about sexuality and multiculturism, you were taught math, English, history and economics. You were expected to use your brain and be aware of the fact that there were actually other people in the world who also had opinions. And said opinions were expected to make sense by using facts and critical thinking. Can you say "debate club"? You were expected to actually earn your grades through study, hard work and turning in legible papers, reports and passing tests. You weren't graded on a curve — you were graded on what you got right and what you got wrong.

Seems like these days you don't need facts, the ability to think or even a valid argument of any kind. Having an opinion is more than enough. And since we've leveled the playing field, we are supposed to be willing to listen to anybody about anything, lest we show our racist, bigoted or intolerant selves. Hey, just because [someone] is a convicted serial killer and rapist doesn't mean he doesn't have a right to an opinion. Charles Manson is just a grossly misunderstood guy. Saddam wasn't hurting us, why did we hurt him? That five-year-old who kissed the little girl in the playground awaits trial for sexual harrassment. If he's lucky, he'll get counseling and some mind altering drugs that will set him straight.

Meat is bad. Soybeans are good. Man is evil. Animals should be able to vote. Society's right to survive must take a back seat to a rare and nearly extinct weed. Smoking causes cancer and should be outlawed. Marijuana should be legalized. Republicans who are gay must resign. But they must also embrace gayness because they are homophobic.

These are all products of the assclowns — well maybe not soybeans but I've seen some studies….

As far as I can tell, this huge success hasn't changed you at all. So what was the point? Why go through all that if it isn't going to change you?

The only reason it hasn't changed me is that I was already a superficial, grasping egotist with an appetite for guns, cocaine and bondage when I came out here. The experience might easily have changed a nicer man.

"Good morning", the moon said today. His full, round face was a soft, welcoming lemony color. "Would you like to dance?" he asked.

"But I'm late for work", I explained, starting the car — preoccupied with adjusting radio and temperature dials, situating my bags and coffee cup.

"It's alright," he said. "We’ll dance while you drive."

And we did. We faced each other and danced a graceful minuet during my short drive west. My hands on the wheel, as if on his shoulders, I swayed right as he swayed left. We came back again to center and repeated our step with the opposite side. As my car dipped down a hill, my full-faced partner dipped with me until we briefly lost sight of each other, then met again on the ascent, his position slightly lower in the sky than just a little while before.

For a few short minutes we danced gracefully and beautifully until I reached my day's destination.

Putting the car into park and cutting the lights, I looked up to thank my partner. His face, reflecting the not yet risen sun, had reddened slightly. "Oh, mon amoureux de lune!" I exclaimed.

He was blushing.

Having lived through the Malaise of the Seventies, when we were all resigned to a life in earth-sheltered houses, wearing sweaters made out of recycled tires, I've had it with general gloom. Half the population is always gloomy about the nation and the future — sometimes because they're not getting their way, or sometimes because they're just inclined to be the local Eeyore. The good news: youth are more optimistic. The bad news: we'll grind that out of them soon enough.

Or maybe not. I'd guess that the optimistic portion of the youth don't watch much TV news. You'd be surprised how your outlook improves when you're not chewing on the pre-selected Wad of Concern doled out daily by the network news organizations.

Everything we invent is just a prototype for the next mistake. And that's okay. The best we can do is leave the world a little better than we found it. All of us found it full of information only other people know. My youngest kid, at age two or less, grabbed me by the finger one day and pulled me outside. "Papa," he said, "show me something". Translated to the adult: "I've been here about six hundred days or so. You've been here forever. You know what all this stuff is. I don't. Fill me in."

News is how we fill each other in. The need for that will never go away.

And God created man unto His own image. Male and Female created He them, and God looked upon them, and saw that His work was good.

And the Man and the Woman soon forgot God, for they saw that obedience was not fun, and in their boredom they took other gods, for they were weak and exceeding stupid.

So Man went out and partook of the fruit of the vine, and the brew of hops and barley, and the powder of the coca tree, and he stole and robbed and murdered, and lay around the trailer all day, and there was much filing of the disability claim.

And Woman went out smoked crack and fell in with evil men, and the evil men saw the woman was fair, and they whored her on the street corner and took the money for themselves.

[M]ost folks believe that insurance companies are some sort of fairy godmothers that exist to shower free money on them if something bad happens. Nothing could be further from the truth. Insurance companies are legal bookies.

For instance, say I want to bet an insurance company that I wouldn't run into an immovable object with the Zed Three this year. They look at me, plug a bunch of factors into a computer (single chick, sports car, but pushing 40 and no moving violations), squint, poke a calculator, and offer to bet me $XXX dollars that I will keep my car out of the ditch for the next twelve months. If the sum seems reasonable, I take the bet. If there are no car/tree interfaces over the time period, the insurance company wins and keeps the money. If they lose, well, too bad for them.

I can appreciate their dilemma. As long as the government's schools are monopolies capable of compelling attendance, they have to respect the many worldviews of the children that attend them. In a country as diverse as this one, it isn't always obvious where the line lies between making minorities comfortable and acting like a goddamn jackass. The typical bureaucrat prefers to err on the side of jackassery.

My thing with the green situation is: Even if you don't believe in global warming, don't you want to screw the oil company or gas company or utility company?

There are two schools of land-use planning: "reduce sprawl" and "reduce congestion." In practice, those turn into "stop building in low-density areas" and "stop building in high-density areas," respectively.

Sometimes the two sides compromise on stopping all construction. The resulting housing shortage is blamed on greedy landlords and is used as an excuse for more regulations.

André Idzikowski, road-test editor at Car and Driver, passed away on October 11 after a decades-long battle with leukemia. He was 47.

André was a colleague and a good friend. I'd known him since 1984, when I filled in as C/D's "road warrior" while André underwent the first of several radical treatments that prolonged his life for another quarter century. We were close ever since. If attending the same press trip, André and I always shared a car — most memorably, the 2005 launch of the Ferrari Superamerica in France. We drove like thieves through the hills above Venice, then celebrated in the Casino de Monte Carlo, where we spent the evening smoking Montecristos, drinking whisky, and admiring the bejeweled ladies at the baccarat tables. Not once did André mention his worsening illness ("why me?" wasn't his style). Instead, he savored the view and his cigar and shared his many plans.

Tom Tancredo has dropped out of the presidential race. He will be replaced by Montezuma Aztlán Calderón, an undocumented worker from Oaxaca who will denounce the Brown Peril for just $3 an hour plus room and board.

"Worms infect more Americans than thought." Submitter can confirm that very few people seem to be infected with thought

[W]e are raised believing in self-identified Evil. From the bad guy in every movie and fantasy novel to the opponent in every video game, there is this persistent belief that Evil will be easily identifiable because it will wear a black outifit, cackle maniacally, and announce itself as such.

The world don't work that way. As [Will] Smith attempted to point out, not even the most despicable characters in this planet's history thought of themselves as Evil. Nero never said "MWA-HA-HA!" when barbecueing dangerous subversives from Near-East mystery cults. Hitler never woke up and rubbed his hands together and thought "I think I'll be Eeeevil today!" The most heinous crimes perpetrated throughout the millennia have been perpetrated by people with clear consciences because they were doing what they were doing For The Common Good.

Watch out for that. When evil comes, it won't be easily identifiable, with a hunched back and a crazed glint in its eye; it will be nicely dressed, sound reasonable, and have a great team of policy wonks and spin doctors to explain exactly why you need to climb into the cattle car, please.

• The average Canadian walks 900 miles per year.
• The average Canadian drinks 22 gallons of beer per year.

Canadians have a right to be proud: they're getting 41 miles to the gallon.

Study demonstrates that primates pay for sex. It's not like she'd suck macaque for free

I tried to read my policy once, only to give up in abject failure. I mean, I'm a guy who could, at one time, deliver four schools of literary criticism to one work. Classical, modern, post-modern and what I like to call "reality."

Insurance policies, though, take bullshit to a whole 'nother level.

The policy of the appurtenances thereof only will relate to the quid pro quo of the insured, unless the aforementioned debentures are accrued on a day that ends in "Y" in a year that ends in an even number that is not divisible by seven. Unless, of course, said debentures are previously approved under sections XLII, MM, S, M, L or XL by "Frank" who works in accounting and has a concealed carry permit, which kinda creeps us out, because we're good liberals and these types of things frighten us. Frank is the final arbiter of these decisions, unless he's been drinking, in which case you're pretty much screwed because he's the only one who understands this shit, and we are all scared to contradict him, if the truth be known.

I was surprised to see on someone's blog that the writers' strike was still going on. I would think that the biggest danger of going on strike (beyond the lost income) would be that no one notices you are not working. This seems to be a real danger faced by the writers, and an important reason why you will never see Congress go on strike.

As yet another old virgin, I already know the problem isn't that women don't want to have sex, it's that they don't want to have sex with someone as ugly as me. Why would they, when there are a million George Clooney clones out there who will bang even the ugliest girl on request, or even the hint of a request? Those of us who didn't win the genetic cleft-chin lottery are thus left with no dates besides our right hands.

Experience has taught me the reason women tend to freak out over things like pornography is because they project onto men the same "trade-up-until-I-get-the-hottest-guy" attitude they themselves have, and can't comprehend that even the fattest and ugliest real-life girl is better to most guys than the sexiest porn star that only interacts with you through the TV screen.

Right now, it is illegal for any Canadian to "communicate ... any matter" "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt."

In other words, a Canadian can not only be punished for expressing their views (thought crime), they can be charged with possibly harming someone in the near or distant future, merely by uttering or writing forbidden combinations of words (pre-crime).

Now, if I'm gonna have to live in a science fiction novel, I at least want my flying car and robot maid!

Apparently kids with Down's syndrome are better off with their brains sucked out and their skulls crushed than going to school and playing soccer in special leagues.

Soccer, wrestling with the family dog, and pizza dinner and movies with mom, dad, and siblings every Friday night is, I suppose "suffering", and can be avoided through just a little bit of scalpel-vacuum-and-forceps work.

In related news, the saying "You're nobody until somebody loves you" looks less sappy and more horrifying.

Just as the humble Disciples harvested grain on the Sabbath, there will be times that you need to avail yourself of the right lane. You will need to exit the highway. But there may be other eager travelers, just like you, wishing to gain access to the highway. People in less civilized communities might consider this a moment of friction, when a car attempting to enter the highway finds another car zipping along in the right lane, square in its path. They might demand that the entering car "yield" to the oncoming traffic.

Not in the fair state of Kansas, friend. What right, after all, does the car in the right lane have to continue at such a great rate of speed, when his poor neighbor needs to avail himself of the road as well? The wide, level plains of Kansas reflect our great democracy of citizens, in that none should be considered greater than another. Therefore, good Christian temporarily in the right lane, it is incumbent upon you to slow down, that your poorer neighbor on the entrance ramp might partake of our glorious highway, and as rapidly as possible bring himself to the speed, no greater or less, of his neighbors.

I'm from Oklahoma City and our driving style is similar with one major exception. We don't brake for those entering the highway. The idea of the smooth highway merge is apparently missing from the collective driving consciousness here. Most drivers come to a complete stop at the end of the entrance ramp, especially during rush hour, apparently hoping (usually in vain) for a space large enough to accelerate from said dead stop into traffic flowing at around 75 mph. Those spaces are few and far between, unless, of course, a Kansan happens along who will break and allow the stopped Oklahoman the time and space to access the highway.

The underlying problem was identified centuries ago at the Constitutional Convention.

The problem was and is democracy. The theory of democracy holds that the cumulative opinions of the whole populace will produce a synergy little short of magic, with a legitimacy only a deeply vetted consensus can claim. It's useful to remember that alchemy was a contemporary notion. In practice, the informed can be thought of as a negligible contamination of the uninformed, and the uninformed are probably outnumbered by the misinformed and the disinterested, if taken together.

Sunday morning: Five people arrive at my hotel room. One to coat my fingernails with death-proof acrylic, one to sand my hooves, one to make sure I get the dress on properly, one to prep my face for the merciless HD telecast, and one to make my self-cut, home-dyed hair look pretty. At one point, they're all on me at once, assessing their respective sectors with identical furrowed brows. Then the dress comes on, and it's slit so high you can see my utilitarian flesh-colored thong. Unfortunately, this is the Oscars and not a stripper convention. (I've been to both!) The stylist's assistant begins stitching the slit while the makeup artist frantically sponges concealer onto my scraped knees and bruised calves. I am not merely flawed; I am one giant flaw that has manifested itself as an ambulatory being.

Has anybody ever been sitting around and thought "Y'know, if only this vapid, content-free crap was more crisp and colorful, I'd totally watch it"?

Usually, the conversation starts out with the other person convinced that I have not a clue about the history, purpose, and results of government education, and that I quite possibly haven't got the brains to understand the subject. I am hopelessly ignorant not to know that government schools are what made this country great and terribly foolish or stupid to think that just about any parent who cares to try can do a better and cheaper job of educating their child than government.

It doesn't take long to poke this idea full of holes. It is really rather like shooting fish in a barrel. We talk a little about the history of education and literacy in this country, and we talk about the results we achieve at home. And we talk about the actual, normal, and ongoing results of government education.

Then the tune changes! At that point, it's, "Well, Dan, I can see how homeschooling could work for you, but you're obviously much more intelligent and informed than most people. Most people couldn't do that."

Thus, in ten minutes or less, I go from being an uninformed cretin who cannot possibly know what I am talking about to being so astronomically intelligent that my personal experience is totally irrelevant to most people.

It's kind of a rush, let me tell you. I encourage you to try it.

It has been exceedingly difficult to discuss race in this nation for about 30 years, because anytime anyone — white or black — has tried to make a serious point, the word "racist!" is immediately flung out; lasting and damaging labels are instantly attached to people, and so everyone just shuts down. People guard their words and swallow provocative debating points — even if their aim is to generate a real, open and honest forum of ideas — because no one wants to be called a racist. This happened to Bill Clinton and to Bill Cosby; it happened to Rush Limbaugh and Geraldine Ferraro, and driving today I heard the word spat out at Sean Hannity. It happened to me, actually, last week, when I was called a "racist" on another blog for writing this; I was also deemed "hypersensitive" about being called a racist.

To which I replied, "I don't think you’d like it."

But see, I didn't think anything I wrote was "racist." I simply made the mistake of trying to discuss race at all.

"Black" America is forced to live a psychic duality, but in a way, "white" America is, too. We are supposed to — apparently — somehow split our brains, into never even noticing that there are racial differences between us, unless we're working in praise of those differences. So, there are no differences between us ... but we celebrate the differences ... but there are none, and if you think there are, you're a racist. Now celebrate!

Does that make sense? No wonder the national psyche is so battered. No wonder Obama is having difficulty straddling this chasm, despite his long legs. No wonder issues of race are distracting us from a much larger issue, which is whether he is competent to be our president and CIC.

Can I just reiterate how completely insane it is that an attempt to prevent Americans from consuming Bolivian Marching Powder has now become the single largest determinant of our foreign policy in Latin America and much of the Caribbean? It's as if we were boycotting Cuba in an effort to crack down on diabetes.

I look at it this way: I don't belong there.

I never coached a [Catholic Youth Organization] team. I never hauled a group of wannabes in the back of a truck to Central Park and worked them out from dawn to dusk. I never took a kid home in my car and treated his athlete's [foot] in my house when I was in high school. I never did the 8 million hours of work that a student-manager/assistant coach did. I never did any of that stuff.

I was pushed through a door and a silver spoon was shoved in my mouth, that had Kareem and Magic and Worthy and McAdoo and Scott and Cooper and Nixon. I mean, that's how I got my start. And most of the guys that are in [the Hall] did it the other way. So that's how I look at it.

No matter what the team he was given, somebody still has to coach them, discipline them. Somebody has to still earn their respect, which he's done over the years.

How homo sapiens managed to claim the top of the food chain mystifies me, for no other creature on earth — with the possible exception of the manicured French poodle — exhibits such unrelenting silliness. Never in all of recorded history has life been so good for so many, yet all humans can do is bite their nails with worry about the gloomy future that awaits us all. Best-selling books, the nightly news, and countless Web sites stoke the fire of fear: Life is awful and getting worse.

Really? Let me throw out a few facts. In 1900, the average life expectancy for an American was 47 years. In 2004, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, it was 78. In 1900, Americans devoted 50 percent of their incomes to putting food on the table. In the late 1990s, that figure had dropped to 10 percent. By the end of the 20th century, despite a fivefold increase in the U.S. population, forests continued to cover one-third of our land space (the world's forests have actually increased in size since the 1940s). Americans have three times more leisure hours over their lifetimes than did their ancestors in the late 19th century. I could go on and on.

Because the same Armageddon mentality now runs rampant in the auto world. People talk about alternative fuels and smaller cars and "the end of a golden age" as if it's all downhill from here. Bull hockey.

The progress wrought by human ingenuity knows no bounds. Sure, there'll be blips, short-term downs, but the long-term trend is decidedly up.

Once we were freezing to death in caves, worried about becoming lion chow, and now we have so thoroughly conquered the needs of food, shelter, and safety that we are free to lounge about and think "You know, I think life would be about perfect if only my poop chute were a whiter shade of pale."

The thing to remember is that pessimism is a tool: you can sit around and fondle it all day, or you can put it to work. I get some serious mileage out of mine. Project due in two weeks? I'll tell you it can't be done for three and make both of us believe it, and then finish on day nine. Impossible to recreate this file? Here's the backup copy. Woman of my dreams coming down the hallway? I'll make sure I'm awake, just in case.

I have no doubt, none at all, that we are in the midst of a global warming, or, as I prefer to call it, spring.

And I don't want to sound like an alarmist, but it's going to get a lot warmer before it gets cooler.

As an (untimely) widow whose sex life was more than satisfactory for the full 30 years of her marriage, I have learned one lesson, and that is that at some point, regardless of our desires to the contrary, we all reach a point when we must lay out sexuality on the altar and leave it there.

Men and women called to the priesthood and religious life do it earlier than late if their vocations are genuine, and the widowed do it later, but the point eventually comes.

In between lies the middle-aged agony of actually making the decision.

The dilemma of sexuality: The use-it-or-lose-it finality of it all. Just when we would really welcome and appreciate the companionable consolation of a rewarding sexual relationship, we lose all opportunity.

I'd say, "No fair!" but nobody ever promised us that life would be fair.

Listen: if these Muslim students and their puppet masters don't like the imaginary Islamophobia they accuse Maclean's of stirring up by publishing negative reviews of Little Mosque on the Prairie, wait 'till they get a load of the real Muslim-hating they unleash when they de facto shut down Canada's oldest magazine...

A magazine, I'd like to remind them, that was started by Lt. Maclean over 100 years ago, using his own goddamn money without any goddamn taxpayer subsidies and postal breaks and whathaveyou.

That's what intelligent, resourceful people do when they want to "make their voices heard."

Of course, these aren't intelligent, resourceful people we're talking about. These are parasitical victocrats with fifth rate minds, determined to destroy their host nation one magazine, one taxpayer sponsored nuisance suit, one welfare harem, one OHIP-paid-for genital mutilation at a time.

Easier than flying airplanes you could never have invented into buildings you never could have built.

So Global Warming will pause for a decade, just in time for the world's economic superpower to debate over what to do about it. A very convenient truth indeed.

This means that the scientific consensus for the next decade will be that Global Warming is not happening, but man is causing it. Ever heard the one about the Yemeni Communist who declared, "There is no God, but Muhammed is his prophet?"

When mincing little twerps like Paul Begala posit this rancid crew of Beltway power-mongers as the too-legit-to-quit anti-"egghead" faction representing the vast non-latte-drinking values of Real America, it's almost enough to make a guy pine for the authenticity of John Edwards.