Those damned cartoons

I've been following the controversy over the 12 drawings of Mohammed that have caused such a ruckus in Europe and the Muslim world.

A look at the cartoons themselves shows that the fuss over them is far out of proportion to the artwork itself: A few are unquestionably inflammatory; a couple are neutral or complimentary; at least one is intentionally ambuguous; and a few convey their message so poorly that no point is made or are just asinine.

It's hard to believe that so few media outlets in this country have shown the drawings.

Here, Eugene Volokh gets a lot right. Excerpts won't do it justice; go and read the whole thing.

George Tirebiter, are you listening?

From a report in the Austin American-Statesman:

Hamburger patties and other debris are covering two soutbbound lanes and the shoulder of Interstate 35 near Slaughter Lane after an accident this morning involving two tractor-trailer rigs.

The Texas Department of Transportation is working to clear the mess, but the lanes will likely be closed for at least three more hours (until noon or so), the Austin Police Department said this morning.

No way I could make this up

Osama bin Laden's niece signs with an agency to shop her own reality series: "Osama bin Laden's niece signs with an agency to shop her own reality series" (reality blurred

Blogger widget

Alas, Blogger's new widget for Tiger isn't as cool or helpful as anticipated. I can readily format in bold or italic with just a keystroke, but blockquoting is no easier--it still requires hand coding--and linking is actually harder.

I'd love it if Blogger had better Mac support. Darn.

Hokey smokes!

Look at what Ron found: The HOUSE OF LASCARIS-COMNENUS: From the ROMAN EMPIRE to NEW BYZANTIUM.

NEW BYZANTIUM is The AMERICAS

We are sincerely pleased you have come to visit our Site and we extend to you our warmest greeting in the highest tradition of BYZANTIUM. Our Principal goal is to impart to you heretofore intentionally little known facts about BYZANTIUM as the foundation of Western Civilization. We will avoid knowingly withholding the truth as an aim to social disorientation. Practice of historical deception must cease. We hope that you will enjoy our contribution to the fullest. Welcome.

Gecko gets extreme makeover

Been wondering why Geico's gecko's accent abruptly went cockney? AdFreak explains it all for you. (Actually, somebody in creative at the animation studio that Geico's ad agency worked with does most of the talking here:

“We used our CG experience to train the new gecko guy to act cheekier and show a lot more ‘sales savvy.’ Ultimately we honed an East End geezer type performance, and his cockney accent and mannerisms make for tons of fresh comedic possibilities.” So there it is: Cockney = humor.

[Via Tim Cain.]

A headline I should have expected

Again from the AP via MSNBC: "Psychics aid in search for missing dog." Yeesh.

Mom's favorite sitcom

Mark Evanier wonders why there's not a cable channel devoted to the sitcoms less famous and frequently rerun than the typical TV Land fare:

Dom DeLuise's Lotsa Luck is out on DVD. So is Good Morning, World. So is Nowhere Man and Have Gun, Will Travel and even Mister Peepers. None of these shows are currently rerun on TV channels as far as I know. If people are willing to shell out good money to own all of them, don't you think someone would watch them once a day for free?

Hey, if they're reviving obscure 40-year-old sitcoms, maybe there's some hope for a DVD release of He and She, featuring Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss.

Benjamin played the creator of the superhero, Jetman; Prentiss was his wife; Hamilton Camp was a fireman who was stationed in the building next door to Benjamin's studio; and Jack Cassidy played the unbelievably vain actor who played Jetman on TV. (The character was clearly a model for Ted Knight's portrayal of Ted Baxter a few years later.)

The show was a big favorite of my mother's, and she was so annoyed when it was cancelled that she actually was moved to write CBS in protest. (She got a polite letter in response.)

It's all good

I've spent the last couple of days in San Antonio with Ron, who's attending the American Library Association Midwinter conference.

Last night we had dinner with a number of Ron's colleagues, including Alice Sneary and Alane Wilson, two of the authors of this blog. Librarianship is a technical subject I know little about beyond a few buzzwords that have filtered into my consciousness--but speaking as a library patron, there's a lot on their blog that makes great sense. Not to mention, of course, that Alane and Alice were delightful dinner companions.

They're in the Series!

Astros earn first ever World Series berth

Best political pun of the year

Deep down among the comments on a Volokh post, someone named Drew opines about whether the president really wants Roe v. Wade overturned: "I think Bush has bigger fish to fry than Roe."

Beyond these things

One of my clients has a joke-latin slogan they want on their business cards. I tried looking it up in the various Latin-to-English dictionaries on the Web, with no success. But while I was there, I thought about an intractable, supposedly Latin phrase that had been bothering me for a long time: the name of the rock group Procol Harum--you know, "A Whiter Shade of Pale"?

Anyway, their press materials used to say the name was a Latin phrase meaning "beyond these things."

It turns out that that's sort of right: Freedict's Latin-to-English dictionary gives "procul" (note the "u") as "far, at, to, from a distance." Used this way, it's an adverb. "Harum" is "of these things." So "procul harum" is probably better translated as "of these faraway things."

If somebody asks you the question in Really Hard Trivia, though, they're looking for "beyond these things". Or else they're wanting to hear that it was the name of Keith Reid's drug dealer's Persian cat. But that's a different story.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain

Mark Evanier, who knows more than a little about television, has a few words to say about President Bush's teleconference with soldiers in Iraq:

This 'media event' was carefully rehearsed and loosely-scripted and someone -- maybe the same someone who erred by suggesting the format in the first place -- compounded the disaster. They allowed the media to see and tape the rehearsals where the troops were told what would be discussed in seeming spontaneity. I would love to hear the explanation of why they allowed this to be seen. It made Bush look like a marionette who walks in and does what his own handlers don't trust him to do without careful preparation. We all know that much of what we see on television that's represented as unplanned is meticulously prearranged. Most producers, however, know enough not to show the world just how prearranged.

How awful was it all? I felt sorry for George W. Bush. That's how awful it all was.

Slippery slope? Probably not.

Evan Wolfson, on Freedom To Marry, does everybody a service by clarifying the status of that supposed three-way marriage in the Netherlands:

On an Illinois radio show I did last week -- available on our website or at this link -- one anti-gay caller characteristically avoided offering a reason why the government should continue excluding same-sex couples from marriage and, as usual, went to the 'slippery slope' diversion of 'polygamy.' As new proof that the sky was falling, the caller said that the Netherlands, which has ended the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage, has now also allowed a trio of man and two women to wed. Before yet another right-wing scare tactic gathers traction, please note that this claim -- that the Netherlands registered a multi-partner 'civil union' -- is untrue.

Following the radio interview, we looked into the caller's claim and found an erroneous September 27 report in something called the Brussels Journal -- www.brusselsjournal.com -- misusing the term 'civil union' and talking about something 'registered by a notary.' Once we checked this with a leading Dutch expert who follows legal developments in family law, we learned that the only legally relevant thing that happened was that three people, with the help of a notary, signed a private cohabitation contract -- and did not enter into any kind of legal state-recognized union. Such personal agreements are not registered, and do not have legal implications for third parties. In both these respects, as well with regard to the state's imprimatur, a personal agreement or contract is different from both marriage and registered partnership. (And civil union, as such, is not a legal status in the Netherlands).

Damn. There goes the neighborhood.

I live in Kerrville, the county seat of Kerr County. So I was surprised to see an AP story in the local paper today that Karl Rove officially lives here (the link is to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram because the local paper doesn't carry the story on its web site, even though it's on the front page):

A Kerr County retired nurse is asking the local district attorney to investigate whether it is legal for presidential adviser Karl Rove to vote in Texas while he is living in Washington, D.C.

Rove, it turns out, owns houses in Washington and Florida, but he's registered here, ostensibly living at a bed-and-breakfast somewhere in Kerr County. (This press release says he owns two rental cottages, which might or might not mean the same thing.)

But wait, there's more. The AP also reports that "the Texas Secretary of State has said that Texans who move out of state can still vote in Texas as long as they intend to return to the state." (This is what allowed the first President Bush to vote in Texas while in office; he obviously was living in the White House, but his residence for voting purposes was a suite at a hotel/resort in Houston. And yes, he did move back to Texas.)

But wait, there's more. The AP also reports that Elizabeth Reyes, a lawyer in the Secretary of State's office, was fired after the Washington Post quoted her saying it might be vote fraud to register to vote if you don't live in the place you're registered. Reyes was told she was fired because she'd talked to the media in violation of agency policy. (You partisans can squabble among yourselves about whether that's fishy or not.)

But wait, there's more. The AP also also reports that an entity called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington "filed a complaint about Rove last month, but it was invalid because the complaint must be filed by a registered voter in the same county as the voter in question." The eventual complainant was Frances Lovett of Comfort (right down the road from here), who says CREW didn't contact her; she contacted them.

That's all I have for now; but if I see Rove buying sushi at the H-E-B, I'll be sure to post it.

Calling Ray Harryhausen…

Pythons vs. alligators:

What happens when a 13-foot python with an appetite runs into a 6-foot alligator?Recently, a case of that matchup was discovered in the Florida Everglades. It ended in a tie when the python exploded, leaving both beasts dead.

More on the Oklahoma suicide bomber

Michelle Malkin, whom I admire for her thoroughness if not her politics, has a good round-up on Joel Hinrichs, who blew himself up outside the Oklahoma University football stadium last weekend:

OKLAHOMA BOMBER: DELVING DEEPER

At first I figured Hinrichs was like Charles Whitman, a mentally disturbed misfit with lethal weapons but no real agenda beyond killing others and himself (not like that's not bad enough), but now it's looking like he was a pawn and a dupe of (gasp) radical Islamists.

If that's true, it's sad and horrifying that Hinrichs adopted the terrorist mentality. The cynicism and cowardice of those who engineered his corruption is breathtaking and appalling. Hinrich's story deserves a lot more notice.

Legal community overjoyed

Well, at least somebody thinks Harriet Miers is going to make a good Supreme Court justice. The Dallas Morning News reports:

Word that an esteemed Dallas lawyer and former councilwoman could become the next justice of the U.S. Supreme Court has stirred Texas pride among her many colleagues and friends.

[....]

"The legal community in Dallas has every right to be overjoyed," said Will Pryor, a mediator in Dallas who worked with Miers at the Dallas Bar Association. "She's a product of our legal community. We are all grinning ear to ear around here. It's a happy and proud moment."

Astros make playoffs again

Yay—my Astros made it to the playoffs again this year. (As usual, by the slimmest of margins.)

Let those of us who've witnessed the boys in playoffs against Philadelphia be grateful that that isn't happening again.

Our new Chief Justice

John Roberts has been confirmed as Chief Justice of the United States today by a margin of 78 votes to 22.

Let me say again that Roberts is clearly well qualified and I expect him to be an excellent justice. I realize that I'm just about alone among liberals, especially gay liberals, in this regard. But I refuse to be a prisoner of ideology.