This is a breaking story, but apparently Turner Broadcasting wanted to promote their surreal Cartoon Network show Aqua Teen Hunger Force in an unusual way, so they hired New York's Interference Inc., which describes itself as "A nationwide guerilla and alternative marketing agency," to drum up some street-level publicity.

I guess you could say it worked:

Electronic light boards featuring an adult-cartoon character triggered bomb scares around Boston on Wednesday, spurring authorities to close two bridges and a stretch of the Charles River before determining the devices were harmless.

Turner Broadcasting Co., the parent company of CNN, said the devices contained harmless magnetic lights aimed at promoting the Adult Swim network's late-night cartoon "Aqua Teen Hunger Force." Law enforcement sources said the devices displayed one of the Mooninites, outer-space delinquents who appear frequently on the show, greeting visitors with a raised middle finger.

Sound's like somebody's in trouble.

The discovery of nine of the devices around metro Boston led state, local and federal authorities to close the Boston University and Longfellow Bridges, and block boat traffic from the Charles River to Boston Harbor.

In addition, the Pentagon said U.S. Northern Command was monitoring the situation from its headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado, but said none of its units were sent to assist.

Davis said police "are going to fully investigate this and get to the bottom of it."

Big trouble.

Via Instapundit, here's a look at Jumbolair, the fly-in community in Ocala, Florida where John Travolta lives. (He uses his Gulfstream executive jet when he doesn't feel like taking the big plane.) I think if you enjoy flying, this is the way to live.

I just discovered Sour N Sweet, a silly little blog with a bunch of silly little stories.

I am sick. The kind of sick that makes the thought of consuming anything other than ginger ale and Jell-O a scary proposition. With our household's Jell-O supply depleted last week by the previous host to the virus now cooling its heels in my stomach, I mustered all of my energy to go buy more. Only problem: the closest grocery store was Whole Foods. If you want to blow a Whole Foods employee's mind, ask them where the Jell-O is.

Here's a gripe I can sympathize with:

The money quote to me is this one from a Verizon Wireless VP:

"They [Apple] would have been stepping in between us and our customers to the point where we would have almost had to take a back seat … on hardware and service support,"

To me, that reads, "They would have been stepping between us and our customers to the point where we would have almost had to forgo making money off ringtones, music and getting pictures off phones."

They may make a big deal about how their network is the best (and I can give them some leeway because of it) - but they disable the full features of most of their phones, like the ability to exchange files with your computer so that you can see those crappy phonecam pics on a screen that you don't have to squint to see or customize it to your own specifications. Well, you tecnically can, but only if you pay Verizon for the privilege.

Then there's this:

A Note to the Man Who Talked to Me at Kinko’s

Thank you for asking me if I was finished with my work station, telling me you needed to laminate something there if I was. I was already on my way out the door, but I paused a second to say it was all yours.

With that I was out the door, and started across the street crosswalk. I didn't even see it coming. A maroon car zipped around a corner without seeing me. As it zoomed an inch by me, I couldn't help thinking a second would have made all the difference. A second earlier and I could have been road kill. Nuts.

So thanks Mr. Kinkos Stranger, I might owe you my life.

Also, the photography is beautiful. Check it out.

You don't have to be a big-time musician to understand how to show some class. Here's Robbie Link writing about something that has to sting a bit:

It's a running joke/sad truth amongst musicians about the shows where the band outnumbers the audience. I've been there. It doesn't matter if it's an eighty piece orchestra with fifty people in the audience or a quintet with an audience of three. It feels bad either way. But it can be good. I played in Dana Auditorium in Greensboro, NC, once. It's a large concert hall. There were four of us. Well - the audience did outnumber the band but not by much - I think there were 15 of them. We put chairs on stage so they would be right up next to us and it was great - like a living room concert. I think they even had a sofa up there that was a prop for some theater piece. The audience loved the intimacy and we got to play acoustically just like playing at home.

I've been at a live show where the performer was whining about the small size of the audience, forgetting that we were the ones who showed up. I've gotta admire these guys for realizing their fans deserved the show they came to see. Bringing everybody on stage for a close-up show was a cool idea.

I'm trying a new spam filter for my comments. Instead of showing you a CAPTCHA picture, it just asks you to type a word. It seems more stable than the previous plugin too.

Try it out.

John Hawkins of Right Wing News has an editorial in Human Events defending the war on drugs. I want to talk about a few of the arguments he makes:

Libertarians often attack the war on drugs as a waste of tax dollars and an infringement on personal liberties. That is misguided thinking that comes from trying to apply unworkable theoretical concepts in the real world.

At least libertarians have theoretical concepts, like freedom and personal responsibility.

By the way, nowhere in the rest of the article does he try to defend the drug war's record of destroying our personal liberties.

For example, you often hear advocates of drug legalization say that we're never going to win the war on drugs and that it would free up space in our prisons if we simply legalized drugs. While it's true that we may not ever win the war against drugs -- i.e. never entirely eradicate the use of illegal drugs -- we're not ever going to win the war against murder, robbery and rape either.

In a way, I agree with Hawkins here. I've never liked the argument that drugs should be legalized because they can never be eradicated, and for exactly this reason. In order for this argument to work, you have to argue that drug use is very much less evil than those other crimes. But if we could convince people of that, we probably wouldn't need the rest of the argument.

Nevertheless, let me point out that while we may never eliminate robbery, rape, and murder, we can certainly police them more effectively than drug use for the simple reason that there will be cooperating witnesses. Robbery and rape victims—and the friends and families of murder victims—will complain to the police about these crimes and help them identify the bad guy.

That never happens with the sale, possession, and use of drugs because there's no victim to complain. Violent crimes and property crimes have to be solved; drug crimes have to be discovered.

Since no one wants the police involved, they end up spying on people, searching cars and homes, monitoring financial transactions, bugging phones, and doing a bunch of other things that infringe on our personal freedoms.

But our moral code rejects each of them, so none -- including drugs -- can be legalized if we still adhere to that code.

Hawkins is pretty quick to whip out the first person plural there. Maybe his moral code rejects all four of those crimes, but our moral code does not. In particular, my moral code does not reject drug use, and neither do the moral codes of a lot of other good people.

Of course, the number of people using what are currently illegal drugs would skyrocket if they were legalized, so we'd see a new wave of drug-addled burglars if we "legalized it."

I doubt it. Most of the end user's high purchase price of illegal drugs is caused by the direct and indirect costs of drug smuggling. Drugs that don't have to be smuggled are a lot cheaper, and their users don't have to commit crimes to afford their habit. You don't see many drunks breaking into homes to afford their next hit of booze.

But, some people may say, "so what if drug usage does explode? They're not hurting anyone but themselves." That might be true in a purely capitalistic society, but in the sort of welfare state that we have in this country, the rest of us would end up paying a significant share of the bills of people who don't hold jobs or end up strung out in the hospital without jobs -- and that's even if you forget about the thugs who'd end up robbing our houses to get things to pawn to buy more drugs.

Man, he just doesn't let up on that. It's not as if this wasn't a major part of the pro-legalization argument. Legalizing drugs will reduce the amount of drug-related crime because drugs will be a lot cheaper and people won't need to live a life of crime to afford a drug habit.

For example, cocaine has some legal medical uses, so there's a legal market. Last time I checked, the cost of medical cocaine was about 1/30th the cost of street cocaine. Who's going to do burglaries to afford a drug habit when they can pay for it by panhandling?

There's another crime-reducing effect as well: If other drugs have similar ratios of legal to illegal price, legalizing drugs could drain 97% of the revenue out of the street gangs and international drug smuggling operations. That should make things quieter in Columbia and on Chicago's west side .

As for that bit about how the rest of us would be paying for drug users' problems, I see his point, but where does that logic end? If we keep thinking that way, we'll end up with a public health nanny state that tries to manage and control every aspect of human behavior that's the least bit risky.

Even setting that aside, we make laws that prevent people from harming themselves all the time in our society. In many states there are helmet laws, laws that require us to wear seatbelts, laws against prostitution, and it's even illegal to commit suicide. So banning harmful drugs is just par for the course.

Yeah, but have a sense of proportion. The first two crimes are just violations which are punished with small fines, and prostitution sentences are also very mild. As for suicide, are people ever really punished for that? I'm pretty sure the laws against suicide are only there as a justification to allow the government to restrain and evaluate suicidal people. None of those laws are enforced by multijurisdictional task forces that invade people's homes in the middle of the night and sometimes shoot 92-year-old grandmothers.

And for the record, I oppose every single one of those laws on principle.

How many homeless people are drug addicts? How many women have had crack babies? How many people are in jail today because they got high and committed a crime? How many lives have been wrecked in some form or fashion by drug use? There's probably not a person reading this column who doesn't know someone who has faced terrible consequences in his life because of drug use.

Sure. I know a bunch of people who screwed up their lives, some with drugs, some with booze, and at least one with a vicious shopping habit.

Not one of them would have been better off if they'd also done time in prison.

That's why once, way back when William Bennett was the drug czar, he responded like so to a caller on the Larry King show who told him that he should "behead the damn drug dealers."

"I mean what the caller suggests is morally plausible," he said. "Legally, it's difficult. But somebody selling drugs to a kid? Morally, I don't have any problem with that at all."

Bennett was right then, he's right now, and my guess is that most parents, upon finding out that someone was peddling drugs to their kid, would agree with him. Since that's the case, do we really want the federal government to take over the role of a pusher and get our kids hooked on drugs to make a profit? No, we don't.

Again, it's like he's never read anything about legalization. People who support legalizing drugs—or ending drug prohibition, to use our preferred terminology—want the currently illegal drugs to be regulated like alcohol or tobacco, both of which cannot legally be sold to children.

Finally, consider Hawkins' turn of phrase about about us wanting "the federal government to take over the role of a pusher". That raises the question: Take over from who? If we don't want to take control of drug sales, then who are we going to leave in control? Who's the pusher during our long-running war on drugs? Who's selling drugs right now? Under our current drug war, who's making the decisions about whether to sell drugs to our kids?

Criminals.

Update: T. F. Stern emailed me his objection to my assertions that legal drugs would be cheap drugs, and cheap drugs would mean less crime:

I agree, at least a little, that if the drugs which have to be smuggled in were legal the price would drop considerably. I would have to put a question mark on the second part. As a police officer on night shift I wish I had a nickel for every store front that got bashed in just for a couple of six packs of beer. Thousands of dollars in damage for a few dollars in beer made no sense to me but it happens all the time. Thieves are still going to steal regardless of the legality of the substance.

He would know; he used to be a police officer.

This is the coolest thing I've seen all week:

Morphable Model Face

The beginning explains how it works, then the really cool stuff begins.

(Hat tip: Lindsey Bayerstein)

A couple months ago I mentioned that Richard Nixon's name would be long-remembered because it's engraved on the Apollo 11 plaque on the airless surface of the moon. I started wondering how long the plaque would actually last and did some research, but for some reason I didn't post what I found. I can't find the links to my sources, but here's what I wrote about it:

On Earth, a plaque like that on Apollo 11 would be subject to erosion by wind and rain. The wind and rain would also carry pollution and other corrosive chemicals which would be deposited on the plaque and eat it away. The moon, on the other hand, has no atmosphere, so there's no wind or rain or flowing water to damage the plaque. It could last a long time, except for a source of erosion we don't encounter on Earth: Micrometeorites.

The space between the planets is hard vacuum, a harder vacuum than we can create in earthbound laboratories, but it's still filled with with very, very small dust particles and even individual molecules floating free. Anything moving through interplanetary space collides with these dust particles at speeds of several miles per second.

The Earth itself collides with hundreds of tons of space dust every day. However, all this dust hits the atmosphere first and slows to a crawl, eventually settling to the surface. All but the largest rocks will lose their orbital speeds in the atmosphere and drop like, well, like rocks.

The Earth's moon, on the other hand, has no atmosphere at all to protect it, so even invisibly small dust particles will smack into the surface at several miles per second. These are called micrometeorites to differentiate them from meteorites large enough to survive the plunge through the Earth's atmosphere.

The continuous lunar micrometeorite storm is mostly insignificant. Astronauts walking around on the moon would have been pelted constantly, but even at a 50 miles per second, the impact of a few molecules would have been unnoticable. However, over time, these dust particles would pit whatever they strike, eventually wearing it down, much as wind can erode away a rock.

Except much slower. From a paper about the design of the Message From Earth plaque on the Pioneer spacecraft, I found an estimated wear rate of about 1 angstrom per year in our solar system. An angstrom is a ten-billionth of a meter. For comparison, Niagra Falls erodes away at the rate of about 1 meter per year. It would take cosmic dust more that twice the age of the Earth to erode that same distance.

This is just a rough estimate, of course. The estimate for Pioneer is for small objects like man-made satellites drifting through space. The moon is large enough to have meaningful gravity, and it will pull in dust from the space around it, increasing the erosion rate. On the other hand, if you look at this image from NASA, it's clear that the plaque isn't just set on the surface of the Moon, it's mounted on one of the landing legs of the Lunar Excursion Module.

That could shield the plaque from some of the dust, reducing erosion. For the sake of this article, let's just assume the one-angstrom-per-year estimate is good enough.

If the engraving on the Apollo 11 plaque is a reasonable 1/10th of a millimeter deep, it will take a million years to wear away Richard Nixon's name.

To put that in perspective, I think the oldest people whose names we know are the Egyptian Pharohs, a comparatively recent 6000 years ago.

Now that I've got some sleep, I have a few more thoughts on the State of the Union address. I'll be skipping around a bit.

I liked some of the general fluff at the front:

The rite of custom brings us together at a defining hour -- when decisions are hard and courage is needed. We enter the year 2007 with large endeavors underway, and others that are ours to begin. In all of this, much is asked of us. We must have the will to face difficult challenges and determined enemies -- and the wisdom to face them together.

Some in this chamber are new to the House and the Senate -- and I congratulate the Democrat majority. (Applause.) Congress has changed, but not our responsibilities. Each of us is guided by our own convictions -- and to these we must stay faithful. Yet we're all held to the same standards, and called to serve the same good purposes: To extend this nation's prosperity; to spend the people's money wisely; to solve problems, not leave them to future generations; to guard America against all evil; and to keep faith with those we have sent forth to defend us. (Applause.)

We're not the first to come here with a government divided and uncertainty in the air. Like many before us, we can work through our differences, and achieve big things for the American people. Our citizens don't much care which side of the aisle we sit on -- as long as we're willing to cross that aisle when there is work to be done. (Applause.) Our job is to make life better for our fellow Americans, and to help them to build a future of hope and opportunity -- and this is the business before us tonight.

I like it when they say stuff like that. It paints a nice vision of democracy.

On the other hand, he does raise the ugly spectre of bipartisanship. I prefer it when they hate each other and get nothing done.

I'm not sure I want this government to "work through [their] differences, and achieve big things for the American people." I don't want to be dragged into their dreams of greatness. I want them to leave me alone so I can achieve my own little things. My goals may be small by comparison to Bush's goals, but they're my goals.

A future of hope and opportunity begins with a growing economy -- and that is what we have. We're now in the 41st month of uninterrupted job growth, in a recovery that has created 7.2 million new jobs -- so far. Unemployment is low, inflation is low, and wages are rising. This economy is on the move, and our job is to keep it that way, not with more government, but with more enterprise. (Applause.)

I'm sure some member of the opposition has already responded by pointing out that the economy isn't good for everyone—the single head of household raising two kids, the factory worker whose job has just been outsourced to the third world—but most economic choices are tradeoffs and the economy is never equally good for everyone. Statistics by their nature are reductions of messy reality into simpler stories that are easier to comprehend. If properly chosen, they are still meaningful and useful.

These statistics have proven themselves over many years, and these statistics mean the country is doing very well by historical standards. President Bush and the Republicans didn't create this healthy economy, they simply don't have the power to do that. As always, we the people created it with our money, our hard work, our ingenuity, and our enterprise. But the President and his party deserve props for not screwing it up. It hasn't always been that way.

First, we must balance the federal budget. (Applause.) We can do so without raising taxes. (Applause.) What we need is impose spending discipline in Washington, D.C. We set a goal of cutting the deficit in half by 2009, and met that goal three years ahead of schedule. (Applause.) Now let us take the next step. In the coming weeks, I will submit a budget that eliminates the federal deficit within the next five years. (Applause.) I ask you to make the same commitment. Together, we can restrain the spending appetite of the federal government, and we can balance the federal budget.(Applause.)

Sigh. That's five interruptions for applause in a single paragraph. Remember what I said earlier about democracy being "banal and unsightly"? This calculated applause is a perfect example. Note that since Speaker Nancy Pelosi is seated right behind Bush we get to see what she applauds for. I'd swear sometimes I can see her pause to make the calculation of just how much to clap. Glenn Reynolds is trying to draw conclusions from this. It's a little depressing to think that it matters.

More substantively, reducing the deficit is not the best reason to cut government spending. The best reason to cut government spending is to stop the government from consuming so much of our productive output.

And, finally, to keep this economy strong we must take on the challenge of entitlements. Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid are commitments of conscience, and so it is our duty to keep them permanently sound. Yet, we're failing in that duty. And this failure will one day leave our children with three bad options: huge tax increases, huge deficits, or huge and immediate cuts in benefits. Everyone in this chamber knows this to be true -- yet somehow we have not found it in ourselves to act. So let us work together and do it now. With enough good sense and goodwill, you and I can fix Medicare and Medicaid -- and save Social Security. (Applause.)

Shorter version: We all promise to work together to not to piss off the AARP.

Bush goes on to discuss healthcare:

...I propose a standard tax deduction for health insurance that will be like the standard tax deduction for dependents. Families with health insurance will pay no income on payroll tax -- or payroll taxes on $15,000 of their income. Single Americans with health insurance will pay no income or payroll taxes on $7,500 of their income. With this reform, more than 100 million men, women, and children who are now covered by employer-provided insurance will benefit from lower tax bills. At the same time, this reform will level the playing field for those who do not get health insurance through their job. For Americans who now purchase health insurance on their own, this proposal would mean a substantial tax savings -- $4,500 for a family of four making $60,000 a year. And for the millions of other Americans who have no health insurance at all, this deduction would help put a basic private health insurance plan within their reach. Changing the tax code is a vital and necessary step to making health care affordable for more Americans. (Applause.)

In other words, tax breaks for people who buy insurance, but not for people who pay for healthcare costs out of pocket. Anybody else think the insurance lobby has something to do with this?

[Update: Of course, that's how it is now anyway, so this isn't actually a step back. Also, the tax break for having insurance will be accompanied by making employer-paid insurance count as taxable income. The upshot is that people will be getting roughly the same tax breaks on insurance they get now, but they'll be able to choose plans that aren't offered by their imployer, and the self-employed will be able get tax breaks too. Arnold Klingk explains what I didn't understand, and I agree with most of what he says.]

...[W]e cannot fully secure the border unless we take pressure off the border -- and that requires a temporary worker program. We should establish a legal and orderly path for foreign workers to enter our country to work on a temporary basis. As a result, they won't have to try to sneak in, and that will leave Border Agents free to chase down drug smugglers and criminals and terrorists...

No kidding. It's well known, too, that because illegal border crossings have become more difficult, people who sneak across are afraid they won't be able to get back in if they leave, so they're actually more likely to settle here instead of returning to their families in their homeland. The devil is in the details for stuff like this, but it's possible that by making it easier to cross the border we'll actually reduce the number of aliens in the country.

It's in our vital interest to diversify America's energy supply -- the way forward is through technology. We must continue changing the way America generates electric power, by even greater use of clean coal technology, solar and wind energy, and clean, safe nuclear power. (Applause.) We need to press on with battery research for plug-in and hybrid vehicles, and expand the use of clean diesel vehicles and biodiesel fuel. (Applause.)

Biodiesel? I wonder if this is pandering to the farm states?

We must continue investing in new methods of producing ethanol -- (applause) -- using everything from wood chips to grasses, to agricultural wastes.

Ethanol. Yup! It's about the farm states.

The rest was about the war. I need to read it more carefully before deciding if I have anything to say about it.

I haven't seen it yet (I'll wait for the transcript and read along), but I'm predicting that the state of our union is strong, and we can make it even stronger. But that's just a guess.

Update: Okay, now I've seen it, and I was close:

...the State of our Union is strong, our cause in the world is right, and tonight that cause goes on.

That was near the end. The beginning...was a touch of class:

Thank you very much. And tonight, I have a high privilege and distinct honor of my own -- as the first President to begin the State of the Union message with these words: Madam Speaker.

Sure, he's the President. He's supposed to show some class, and he has people to help him. Still, it was nice. Democracy is often a banal and unsightly form of government, but every once in a while democracy gives us a nice moment.

I should probably say some more about the speech, but I think I'll leave that up to someone else.

Here's an idea for a post I wish I had come up with: Scared Bunny is blogging about strange signs in the restroom at work.

I'm fascinated by people who can do useless things very well, so I liked Grandinite's link to a video of a guy who's won a fast freehand circle drawing contest.

Is it ethical to sell-off a criminal's possessions to pay restitution to his victims? You'd certainly think so. After all, he took something from the victims, so he should have to give them back enough money to make up for what they lost. It's a basic case of making good for the damage done.

When the crime is murder, of course, the victim isn't around any more, and money can't really make up for the loss of a life, but as a practical matter, the courts usually award a large sum to families of the victims. All the criminal's money can be taken, and his assets can be seized and sold at auction to raise money for the families of the dead.

But what if the murderer is a famous murderer, and his only assets are worthless junk that is nevertheless valuable for being the property of a famous murderer? Is it ethical to pay restitution to the families of the victims from the sale of property that is only valuable because its owner murdered those same victims?

In the case of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Norm Pattis doesn't think so.

Here's a disturbing comparison between a pair of news items:

Jennifer Lea Strange dies from drinking too much at a water drinking contest hosted by KDND, a Sacramento, California radio station. The very next day the station cancels the show and fires everyone involved.

Fairfax, Virginia Police shoot and kill Sal Culosi as he emerges unarmed from his house to meet a friend who is really an undercover cop investigating illegal gambling. A year later, the investigation is concluded, and the officer who pulled the trigger has been suspended for three weeks.

Eugene Volokh points out that Washington state has some really strict laws about the relationships between healthcare providers and their patients. The usual rationale behind these laws is that an exploitive power relationship exists between a doctor and his patients, but I don't understand how that works. Perhaps in some (possibly mythical) past era doctors were viewed as higher beings, but does anyone really feel that way today? I pay my doctor. If anyone has the power in this relationship, it's me.

I guess it's not that way for everyone. In particular, I suspect women probably feel different about getting hit on by a male doctor than I'd feel getting hit on by one of my female doctors. I can try to imagine my response if my male primary care physician suggested that I come back to his place to take a hot tub and relax, but that just makes me giggle. I guess if he persisted, it would be creepy, but it's not that big a deal for me to find another doctor. I suppose it would be more difficult if he were, say, an oncologist treating me for cancer. That's a lot more emotional and it's probably harder to switch doctors.

Still, that's not what Washington's rules are about. Eugene presents it more dramatically, but here's a summary of the rules:

• No dating: No sex, no kissing, no hugging for fun.
• No discussing the possibility of dating.
• No discussing the possibility of dating after the professional relationship ends.
• No dating or even discussing it until two years after the professional relationship ends.
• These rules apply to the patient's family members as well.
• The rules apply not just to doctors, but also to dentists, dental hygenists, and even the guy who makes your glasses.

As Eugene points out, this seems severe to the point of violating people's freedom to marry. Also, the definitions are way too broad. My dental hygenist does not have power over me. Actually, I've had some dental hygenists who were real cute babes, and if I weren't married, I'd have been tempted to ask them out—mostly, I admit, for the absurd challenge of hitting on a woman who's cleaning scum off my teeth.

(Free money-making idea: Lap-dancing dental hygenists. They strip naked and sit on your lap before they start cleaning your teeth.)

If Washington legislators are worried about abuse of power by one party in a relationship, then what about rape? A rapist has power over his victim, but does Washington prevent rapists from marrying their victims? I haven't checked, but I'll bet they don't, especially when it comes to statutory rape. That's criminal law, not professional regulation, but it's still an awkward contrast to justify.

If you insist on a professional regulation example, how about police officers? Which is more an abuse of power, a doctor asking a patient out on a date, or a cop asking out a woman he's pulled over? Cops have a lot more power over people than doctors.

Keeping with the civil service theme, can a firefighter hit on a woman after putting out a small fire in her apartment? What about building inspectors? Members of the planning commision?

I guess the legislature just wants to appear to "do something" about the problem, and the more draconian the laws, the better they think they look.

This show has not been on the air yet, but as a critic, I am able to get advanced copies of shows. Okay, I’m full of it. I got it from Netflix. It's available on DVD with a mid-season recap of the show Heroes.

NBC doesn’t seem to be fully behind this show. The Netflix DVD gives Heroes top billing and it only features a recap of the season so far. You would think that the full length pilot would be the focus. Heroes is already successful, while a new show with a cast of unknowns could benefit from some extra marketing / promotion. NBC's website doesn't give nearly as much info on this new series as TV.com does. And aside from the names of the cast members, probably not as much as I provide here.

The Black Donnellys is a show about four Irish brothers in a New York neighborhood who get caught up in the world of organized crime. There is nothing these siblings would not do for each other – as long as it involves gratuitous violence.

I don’t mind a little darkness in a story, but there’s got to be a glimmer of hope. This show just has characters that make one bad choice after another, sinking themselves deeper into a violent abyss. At the end of my day I want a slightly sunnier picture of the world than this show offers. The performances and the writing are fine and this may be someone else's cup of tea, just not mine. I should also mention that the pilot is co-written by Paul Haggis (Million Dollar Baby, Crash).

I didn’t see any schedule info on the official web site, but I read on TV.com that NBC will air The Black Donnellys on Mondays starting March 5th in the timeslot that Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip now occupies (10:00 / 9:00 pm Central). After a trial period - length unknown, Studio 60 will return for the season's final four episodes (God-willing).

President Bush has offered his plan for Iraq, and in fielding criticism of it, Press Secretary Tony Snow has said anybody who didn't like Bush's plan should offer a better one. I'm planning to answer that challenge in a series of modest proposals. This is just background.

Jennifer the Feral Genius wrote in her blog:

...I can’t quite bring myself to believe we’re going to hit Iran. I’d never be able to defend this position in an actual debate, though, because my reasoning amounts to me waving my hands in the air and sputtering “We can’t! Our military's stretched as it is! We don't have the ability!" ...

It depends what we're trying to do. Do we need to conquer and rebuild Iran? Or do we just need to damage it a bit? Building an entire democratic nation is hard, but our military finds it pretty easy to hurt people and break things.

Military planners differentiate between control and denial. It's the difference between using an asset yourself and preventing your enemy from using it. For example, if your enemy has people and supplies crossing a bridge over a river, it may be enough to simply blow it up with a guided bomb from an aircraft, thus denying it to your enemy. But if you want to use the bridge yourself, you probably need to capture it with ground troops. Control is a lot more difficult than denial, and it's important not to confuse the two.

Arguably, that's been the problem with the war in Iraq. Denying control of Iraq to Saddam Hussein was easy. Controlling it ourselves...that's a lot harder.

(Al-Qaeda has the same problem. They have been able to deny us complete control of Iraq, but captured Al-Qaeda communications indicate they are frustrated by our ability to keep them from gaining control.)

As I understand it, the Cold War shaped the U.S. military to perform a role that was ultimately defensive in nature. We expected an attack on Europe from the Soviet Union, and our military goal was to thwart that attack. To do that, we were going to counterattack and destroy the military forces of the Soviet Union. This counterattack would almost certainly have involved an invasion of the Soviet Union, but our invasion was only for the purpose of stopping their invasion. We had no designs on Soviet land, people, or natural resources. Our goal was to stop the invasion, not take over the country. The U.S. military is designed to attack our enemies but not to conquer them.

By 1990, our military had evolved to to perform this role very well. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, we counterattacked into Iraq and destroyed much of the Iraqi army in only a couple of months.

Note that when we re-invaded Iraq in 2003 we continued to use the terminology of defense. A "preemptive" attack is a counterattack that is launched to stop an enemy attack before it starts. During the Cold War, if we had seen the Soviet army massing for an invasion of Europe, we might have decided to preempt that attack by attacking first. In Iraq, our counterattack was nominally intended to preempt terrorist use of chemical and biological weapons.

By this time, our military had become even more effective at destroying enemy forces, and within three weeks the Iraqi army was destroyed or driven from the field of battle.

President Bush has taken a lot of abuse over the "Mission Accomplished" banner, but in many ways it was accurate. U.S. military forces exist in their current form for the purpose of destroying other nations' military forces, and by that standard, they had accomplished their mission.

Unfortunately, destroying the Iraqi army was not the only thing we had planned to do, but the U.S. military wasn't designed for nation building.

I don't normally do memes, but I've been too busy to write much original material this week, so here goes. (Tom at Doors of Deception tagged me with this one.)

Five things people who know me might be surprised to hear:

1. Floater. I have a permanent floater in my left eye that's right near the center of my vision. When it drifts in to the exact center, I tend to reflexively glance at solid colors around me—the sky is best if I can see it—trying to get a better look at it. Then, when I realize what I'm doing, I try to shake it out of my vision by glancing sharply left and right several times. If you've seen me doing this in the middle of a conversation, now you know what was going on.
2. Ignorance of Professional Sports. If you know me, you know I don't follow sports, but you probably don't realize the full scope of my ignorance. For instance, two of the sports headlines on Yahoo right now are "Pacers, Warriors make eight-player deal" and "Schottenheimer to return to Chargers." I don't know who Schottenheimer is, I don't know where those teams play, and if the headlines weren't labeled, I couldn't even tell you which sports we're talking about.
3. Peanut Butter and Ketchup Sandwich. Sometimes, I just gotta have one.
4. Prosopagnosia. I think I have a little bit of it. Prosopagnosia is difficulty recognizing faces. Some people with severe forms of it—often caused by brain damage—are completely incapable of recognizing even close friends and family by their face. They have to rely on clothing, voice, behavior, and context. I just have a little trouble learning to recognize people until I've met them several times, especially if I see them out of context, and I'm easily thrown by a change of makeup, hair style, or sometimes clothing. I also have trouble matching faces and names. There are whole groups of people where I recognize everyone and I know all their names, but I can't match the names to the faces.
5. I Like More Rap Music Than You'd Think. Well, not much of the gangsta stuff...or maybe I'm confusing rap and hip-hop...if there's even a difference between rap and hip-hop...maybe I shoud say I like some music that's rap-ish. Obviously, I don't know much about rap, but from time to time I do enjoy the work of Eminem, Everlast, Black Eyed Peas, Gnarls Barkley, with maybe a little bit of Kanye, Nelly, Twista, and Will Smith. I never said I was hard core. Blogga 4 Life.

Now I'm supposed to pass this on to five other people. I don't really know who's going to read this, but I guess I'll pass this on to Leslie, John, Libby, Pete, and Philipp. I don't think any of them except Leslie do memes, and she probably did this one months ago, but now I've done my duty.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned former police officer Barry Cooper and his hugely hyped but not-yet-released Never Get Busted video that purported to explain how not to get busted for drugs. My gut feeling was that it was going to be a big disappointment. Nevertheless, I ordered a copy, on the theory that I could watch it so that you don't have to.

I haven't received the video yet, but I just got an email which does not make me feel better about it:

Greetings Customers,

Thanks for your order. I am using the money to travel all over the nation to speak out against our unjust war on drugs.

Dude, you better not be. I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to charge my card until you ship the product.

Due to the overwhelming demand because of the world attention my DVD has recieved, please allow the entire six weeks to recieve your order. I promise you will be satisfied with my product. I even added some extra footage for you since the media frenzie. All orders placed in February will be recieved within 3 week.

Re-check my website, www.nevergetbusted.com, to see a newly posted actual sneak preview of the DVD you ordered.

 Remember: Save a child from molestation by releasing non-violent drug offenders!!!

Your friend,

Barry N. Cooper

CEO/NeverGetBusted.Com--The Most Trusted Name In Anti-Prohibition

"The Most Trusted Name In Anti-Prohibition"? No, I think that would be Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance, or maybe Pete Guither at DrugWarRant, or maybe former Retired Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper and the other 62 speakers at LEAP. This kind of self-serving promotion is unattractive.

However, when I clicked through and watched the sneak preview video, I have to say it wasn't bad.

The preview is a segment of Cooper driving down the highway, looking at cars going by and explaining why some of them fit a profile that would attract the attention of a narcotics officer.

He sees a woman wiping her nose and says that would make him think she might have cocaine. Later he becomes interested in a car with a college sticker and four young people in it, saying that they're probably marijuana smokers. I think he means that with four college students in a car, there's a pretty good chance that at least one of them is holding pot.

He also says that he would stop cars with "D.A.R.E." and "Say No To Drugs" stickers and find a lot of drugs that way. This sort of confirms my theory about police reaction to stickers on your car, which is that nothing you can put on your car will deter an officer, and a lot of things might get their attention or piss them off.

Some of Cooper's advice seems pretty obvious, such as "Do not drive down the highway rolling a joint." But since he says that right after actually finding and filming someone doing exactly that, maybe it was worth mentioning.

Cooper also says cops hate making narcotics stops on rainy days, because everybody gets wet, so there's not much chance you'll get stopped if it's raining. I thought it was obvious that cops won't want to get wet, but it's interesting to hear they actually let it change their behavior. He even goes so far as directly saying that if you're going to travel with drugs, do it on a rainy day. I was surprised by such a direct encouragement of a criminal act.

In general, Cooper comes across as an ex-cop who doesn't have much affection for the job or the people that do it. Just in this short preview, he manages to paint his fellow officers as adrenaline junkies, racists, and liars.

The rest of his video might be interesting. At the very least, I expect some interesting insights into how drug cops do their job. That sort of thing is always fascinating, and that more than anything is why I ordered this video. No, really.

I just finished watching the sixth season premier of 24. It looks like it's going to be another very bad day for Jack.

Shortly before the start of the fifth season, I made a prediction about Jack Bauer, and that prediction has now come true. Telling you what it was would be a spoiler for tonight's episode, so I'm putting it below the fold.

[Update: In an earlier version of this post, I had assumed Ocean City was in Delaware, but as Mike Mahaffie points out, it's in Maryland. This post has been re-written to reflect that fact.]

It's been a while since I wrote anything about Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), so I've been planning to look in on them to see what sort of trouble they're causing. However, Radley Balko at Reason has saved me the trouble.

In Maryland on October 29 of last year, officer Douglas A. Smith—described as "OCPD's toughest DUI enforcement officer"—and trainee Natalie R. Smolko of the Ocean City Police Department spotted an erratically-driven vehicle and pulled it over. They gave the driver, John Atkins, a preliminary breath test, and he blew a 0.14 blood alcohol content (BAC). Instead of arresting him, however, the officers decided to let him call a friend, who came to the scene and gave Atkins and his wife a ride home.

Officers Smith and Smolko were questioned about this decision later. They said they released Atkins because he spoke clearly and didn't fumble when giving them his license and stepping out of his car, so they concluded he was unimpaired. (I guess they forgot about the erratic driving which drew him to their attention in the first place.)

The full-time moral panic squad at MADD has a detailed legislative agenda which spells out what they'd like to see happen to people caught driving with a BAC of 0.14:

• .08 Per Se: MADD wants a 0.08 blood alcohol content (BAC) to be per se indication of Driving Under the Influence (DUI), meaning that operating a vehicle with a BAC that high is in itself the crime of DUI, so Atkins should have been arrested even though he showed no signs of impairment.
• Administrative License Revocation: Punishment without the bother of a trial. According to MADD, Atkins should lose his license merely for being arrested for DUI, without waiting for a judicial finding of guilt.

If convicted (which would be a slam-dunk under the .08 per se rule), MADD has a few more items on their checklist:

• Vehicle Impoundment: Atkins's car would be impounded to prevent him from driving it.
• Vehicle Sanctions While Suspended: If Atkins drives a car while suspended, police can seize it and sell it off.
• Ignition Interlock: When Atkins was eventually allowed to drive again, he would have an ignition interlock installed in his car so that he would have to pass a breath test before he could drive anywhere.

Each of those provisions is already a part of Maryland law according to MADD. In addition, MADD wants Maryland to pass a few more laws that would apply to Atkins's situation:

• Vehicle Confiscation: Atkins's vehicle should be seized at the time of his arrest to keep him from driving it.
• Plate Sanctions: The license plates for Atkins's car would be impounded and destroyed to keep him from using them on another car.
• Anti-Plea Bargaining: The prosecutor should not allow Atkins to plea down to a non-alcohol offense.
• Mandatory Alcohol Assessment/Treatment or Mandatory Alcohol Education: Atkins would be assessed for alcohol abuse problems and required to get treatment or complete an alcohol education program.
• Lower BAC for Repeat Offender: If Atkins is convicted, then next time the police stop him, the allowable BAC should be lower, such as 0.05.

So, when Atkins was released, you can imagine MADD's angry response, can't you?

Actually, no, you probably couldn't imagine this:

"We feel very confident that the officers followed the proper procedures and protocols," said Caroline Cash, executive director for the Chesapeake Region of MADD.

...

...MADD Eastern Shore Victim Advocate David Elzey praised the proper use of the tool.

"He administered the (test) after he had decided not to make an arrest and he made the right call by not letting him continue driving," Elzey said. "He probably saved lives by not letting him drive home."

MADD representatives expressed absolute faith in Smith, who lost his mother-in-law to a drunken driver and who was himself struck by one in another incident.

"This is an officer with incredible experience and he decided not to go forward with the decision to make an arrest," Cash said.

"He's had a couple hundred DUI arrests in a few years," Elzey said. "Doug Smith has done so much. We have faith he knows what he's doing."

Well, that's one possible explanation for MADD's reaction.

I've got another one. You see, I've left an important fact out of the story. The driver, John C. Atkins, is in the Delaware House of Representatives.

It's known that Atkins flashed his legislative ID at officer Smith during the encounter, and when I thought all this took place in Delaware, I assumed that's what got him the unusually friendly treatment. I still think it probably helped.

Now that the media has found the story and people are starting to raise a stink about it, MADD is coming to the defense of an officer who has been helpful to their cause.

In an unrelated note of strangeness, according to the newspaper report by Patrick Gavin, a few hours after Atkins was released by officer Smith, he was re-arrested by police in Millsboro on a charge of "offensive touching" of his wife. He plead guilty.

• Torture by CSI: Miami. I could only take 4.5 minutes. How much can you stand? Watch the video. (How many times does he put on those glasses.)
  (Hat tip: Franklin Harris)
• This clip from Idiocracy shows what the news will be like in the future if we keep dumbing things down.
  (Hat tip: VM at Hit & Run
• Here's an old favorite that I haven't linked to yet: Cows With Guns.

President Bush has announced his plan for victory in Iraq, and I'll say this about it: It sounds like a plan. Maybe the news sources I usually read have all been omitting this stuff from other reports, but this is the first thing I've heard about the war in Iraq since the initial invasion that sounds like actual military planning.

When I first started hearing about the 20,000-troop surge, the reports seemed to imply that this would be little more than a broad increase in troop levels—a few extra companies for every commander.

That wouldn't be much help. In almost any war, you want to concentrate your forces in order to overwhelm the enemy at a particular location, and you want to choose the location that will do the most good.

The new plan seems to do that. Some of the troops are headed to Anbar Province to make sure it doesn't fall to the heavy concentration of Al-Qaeda forces there. Nearly all the rest of the troops—probably about 15,000 I'm guessing—are headed for Baghdad.

I'm not saying this is a plan for victory, because I sure don't know enough to tell, but at least it sounds like a plan. 20,000 more troops in all of Iraq won't do much good. 15,000 more troops in Baghdad...that might make a big difference.

Over at StoptheDrugWar.org, Scott Morgan quotes from the Seattle Times:

The [U.S. asparagus] industry has been decimated by a U.S. drug policy designed to encourage Peruvian coca-leaf growers to switch to asparagus. Passed in 1990 and since renewed, the Andean Trade Preferences and Drugs Eradication Act permits certain products from Peru and Colombia, including asparagus, to be imported to the United States tariff-free.

To which Morgan responds:

This is what we're trying to tell you about the U.S. war on drugs. The people running this thing will screw over American farmers while pretending to protect our nation's interests.

The drug warriors have been screwing over everyone else for decades, it's about time they did it to someone who deserves it, and protectionist farmers certainly deserve it. They've been screwing us consumers for a long, long time.

In a way, this is like having the school bully who always takes your lunch money getting beat up by the school bully who likes to shove your head in the toilet.

Elsewhere Morgan says:

Notwithstanding divergent views on free trade among our readership, I'm sure we can all agree that tariffs shouldn't be arbitrarily lifted in support of a failed drug war policy in Peru. Any success achieved in South America (there hasn't been any, but bear with me) must be measured against the sacrifices American farmers are forced against their will to make.

Yes, this is a foolish way to make trade policy, but American farmers aren't being forced to do anything. For years, American consumers wanting to buy asparagus from non-Americans have been forced to pay extra money to do so. Now, thanks to the War on Drugs, Americans are free to buy asparagus from Peru if they want to.

Besides, reducing the retail price of asparagus my be the single greatest accomplishment of the War on Drugs.

My favorite new show of this TV season is Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Unfortunately, I seem to be in the minority. But that’s because people just don’t get it.

The show boasts a great cast that includes Matthew Perry, Sarah Paulson, Amanda Peet and a handful West Wing veterans. It’s a smart and funny show produced by Aaron Sorkin, the creator of such excellent TV fare as The West Wing and Sports Night. It takes place behind the scenes of a Saturday Night Live type of show called "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip". The key words here are behind the scenes.

One of the main complaints I’ve heard around the water cooler or seen on line, is that the jokes and sketches that are in the show-within-the-show (to be known for this posting as "Studio 60") are just not funny. I don't know what they're spiking the water cooler with, but I have laughed more watching Studio 60 than I have in the last 20 years of SNL.

Well, in case you missed the premise, this show is about what goes on BEHIND the scenes of an SNL type show. The emphasis is not on the content of the show-within-the-show or what happens when “Studio 60” is “on the air”. The humor comes from how the characters react to what happens offstage or in preparation of the show. A couple of the actual sketches were quite funny as well, such as “Spit-take Theater” or when Dateline: To Catch a Predator busted Santa Claus.

It would seem to me that they would not want to compete with SNL for topics/material seeing as how they are on the same network and all. I think the people that are disappointed with the show are just looking for a show like SNL. That is not what this show is. (behind the scenes, people.)

So, do yourself a favor, watch Studio 60 with no pre-conceived expectations or at least the correct one. Watch it expecting that you’re going to see a well-written, character-based drama that will also make you laugh.

Update: Studio 60 Live on the Sunset Strip airs 10:00/9:00pm Central - Monday Nights on NBC (thanks, Bonnie!)

Hi! I’m Gary the new Windypundit Art & Entertainment critic. I will primarily be writing about books, movies, TV shows and sometimes CD's that I have recently read, seen, or listened to. It will not necessarily include the most recently released movies or the latest books or CD’s - only what I may happen to see. I will try to stick to things I really like and point out some treasures that you may have missed. Who knows, as I get back into blogging, it may inspire me to keep up on more current fare.

My main topic will be TV as that is what I spend most of my entertainment time viewing. I may venture into some non-entertainment postings on occasion and possibly do some dogblogging to provide a balance to the catblogging you’ve grown accustomed to.

I hope this will be something that you, the readers and I will both enjoy.

A bunch of folks showed up at the International Plaza shopping mall yesterday to distribute fliers and conduct a survey as part of the effort to save the plaza and a few neighboring properties from eminent domain abuse.

Larger ImagePicking Up a Survey Packet

(The young lady at right is a reporter who showed up to cover the effort.)

The village of Arlington Heights is trying to use a TIF district to take over the mall property so Target can build a store there. Not only will the village be saving Target from the effort of assembling the land, but the village has also promised to rebate some of the property taxes back to Target in the form of a sales tax reduction, according to TIF opponents.

Larger ImageScott Bludorn Instructs the Troops

The survey effort was lead by Scott Bludorn, a local activist and occasional office-seeker who is familiar with running political operations. I was amazed by how well prepared he was, with maps and lists of likely voters for everyone who showed up to help. He also had practical instructions for approaching people, taking the surveys, and handing out fliers.

Larger ImageSurvey Materials

(The most important rule of distributing fliers, by the way, is never leave them in or on a mailbox. Only the U.S. Post Office is allowed to deliver stuff to mailboxes and they get pretty upset when someone else does it.)

The survey and flier operation continues today, and may be repeated again in the near future.

This year I'm trying a new experiment and bringing a co-blogger on board here at Windypundit. Gary from Gary on TV (and stuff) will be joining me from time to time as the Art & Entertainment critic.

I've been wanting to expand my movie and television coverage, but I can't seem to get started. I'm hoping having a co-blogger will encourage me to post a few more things myself.

Gary's personal blog had a hard time building readership, but he's a good writer and he cares about the art of television and movies. I think you'll enjoy reading his posts.

John Ruberry links to a Sunday Times report that Israel is planning a nuclear strike on Iran.

I'm not sure what to make of this story. Israel planning to nuke Iran just is the inevitable consequence of Iran's threatening to develop nuclear weapons. Iranian leaders have been calling for Israel's destruction for years. Now that they are acquiring the means to do so, Israel is making plans to nuke them first.

Iran wanted to be a nuclear power. Well, that's how it works. Now you have enemies that plan nuclear wars against you—balance of terror, mutually assured destruction and all that. Welcome to the nuclear club.

It's hard to know how serious Israel's plans are. A nuclear war will happen fast, and there won't be much time for thinking about it when it starts. Therefore any country that has nuclear weapons is going to have planning staff to decide how to use them. When not fighting a nuclear war (which is, so far, thankfully, always) the staff conducts wargames and puts together canned plans for attacking enemies. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the U.S. also has a plan for a nuclear attack on Iran.

(Heck, I have a plan for a nuclear attack on Iran, but that's a topic for another post...)

A conventional bombing attack against Iranian nuclear facilities would require a huge force. The United States could do it easily, but Israel would have a hard time conducting such a large air operation. Israel is therefore planning an alternative attack using small nuclear bunker-buster bombs in the one-kiloton range, according to the article.

The middle east has been a troubled region for a long time, and it may be about to get even worse. If Israel launches a conventional air strike against Iran, the Iranian leadership will have just minutes to decide whether to let it continue or to try to stop it and then hope the Israelies don't have the willpower to use their nuclear strike plan.

If Israel does nuke Iran, the Islamic powers will go insane, which would be bad for U.S. interests in the region. This raises the possibility that the United States should destroy Iran's nuclear facilities in a conventional attack so that the Israelies won't do so in a nuclear attack.

Interesting times.

Here are a few more of the first few pictures I took with my D200, back when I only had the 35mm prime lens.

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This political quiz asks you to make some odd choices. For example, who do you trust more, the Postal Service or the Pentagon?

I scored a 22, which puts right in the middle. That's about what I expected. As a libertarian, I'm all over the place on a quiz that assumes left and right are the only options. Sometimes I hated all the answers.

In some ways I'm what might be called a Guns and Gays Liberal. An America where happily married gay couples had closets full of assault weapons is an America I would be happy to live in.

While the legal battles for International Plaza are slowly grinding forward, the public relations battle is picking up steam. Sheila Ahern of the Daily Herald has a nice summary of what's going on:

In the past few months, the plaza’s owners have held two rallies, phoned residents and started a Web site to try to save their shopping center from eminent domain condemnation.

On Saturday and Sunday they’re looking for volunteers to help go door-to-door to persuade Arlington Heights residents to speak up to save the plaza at Arlington Heights and Golf roads.

“We can’t lollygag around,” said Stephen Bachtell, general manager of Studio Salons in the International Plaza. “We go to (village board) meetings and no one says anything, but people are listening to us. This is getting bigger

If you're interest in helping out, here's how:

International Plaza owners are looking for volunteers to help canvass Arlington Heights neighborhoods on behalf of their cause. Volunteers should meet between 11 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Oak Furniture Creations, 214 E. Golf Road at the International Plaza.

Actually, the meeting is not at Oak Creations but at the vacant storefront the used to house Oak Creations.

Larger ImageOak Creations (vacant)

According to International Plaza owner Su-Chuan Hsu, Oak Creations left the mall because of the looming condemnation.

Update: The web site mentioned in the article is probably isthisblighted.com.

Update: Here's a copy of the canvassing flyer they'll be distributing: (low-res) (print-quality)

• I love these movie trailer remixes. Check out Scary Mary.
• What if Lord of the Rings had been written by someone else? Say, Ian Fleming, Raymond Chandler, or Gene Roddenbury? ("The Halflings, cap'n, they will na take the strain!")
• If you ever have a need for a dominant, a disc jocky, and a meeting facilitator, be sure to check out Ouchy the Clown.

(Hat tip: Alexandra Billings.)

FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP, N.J. - A metal, rock-like object about the size of a golf ball and weighing nearly as much as a can of soup crashed through the roof of a Monmouth County home, and authorities on Wednesday were trying to figure out what it was.

Nobody was injured when the oblong object, weighing more than 13 ounces, crashed into the home and embedded itself in a wall Tuesday night. Federal officials sent to the scene said it was not from an aircraft.

The rough-feeling object, with a metallic glint, was displayed Wednesday by police. "There's some great interest in what we have here," said Lt. Robert Brightman. "It's rather unusual. I haven't seen anything like it in my career."

He said he hoped to have the object identified within 72 hours, but declined to name the other agencies whose help he said he had enlisted.

Police received a call Wednesday morning that the metal object had punched a hole in the roof of a single-family, two-story home, damaged tiles on a bathroom floor below and then bounced, sticking into a wall.

The object was heavier than a usual metal object of that size, said Brightman, who added that no radioactivity was detected.

Hmmm...Freehold Township, New Jersey...Is that anywhere near Grovers Mill?

Update: Cripes! Freehold Township is only about 15 miles from Grover's Mill!

Come to think of it, however, this is more of a Phoenixville, Pennsylvania kind of situation.

Phoenixville is 65 miles away.

President Bill Clinton's enactment of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on homosexuality has been criticized by a lot of gay rights supporters on the grounds that it requires gays to stay in the closet if they want to stay in the military.

I always felt this was a little unfair because "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was a lot better than the previous military policy, which might be characterized as "Ask, then Discharge" (or before that, "Investigate, then Imprison"). A gay person wanting to serve in the military before 1993 could only do so by lying when questioned about it. Now at least they weren't supposed to be questioned. Clinton's new policy may have required gays to stay in the closet, but the old policy used to pull them out of the closet even if they were willing to stay in.

It turns out there may be another advantage to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" that I didn't even think of (but should have):

Last year I held a number of meetings with gay soldiers and marines, including some with combat experience in Iraq, and an openly gay senior sailor who was serving effectively as a member of a nuclear submarine crew. These conversations showed me just how much the military has changed, and that gays and lesbians can be accepted by their peers.

This perception is supported by a new Zogby poll of more than 500 service members returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, three quarters of whom said they were comfortable interacting with gay people. And 24 foreign nations, including Israel, Britain and other allies in the fight against terrorism, let gays serve openly, with none reporting morale or recruitment problems.

I now believe that if gay men and lesbians served openly in the United States military, they would not undermine the efficacy of the armed forces. Our military has been stretched thin by our deployments in the Middle East, and we must welcome the service of any American who is willing and able to do the job.

That's from a New York Times op-ed column. The writer is retired Army General John M. Shalikashvili, a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Before "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," people who opposed gays in the military could claim that it might undermine the moral, discipline, and efficiency of the United States military, and that it was foolish to conduct social experiments in such a vital institution. What "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" did was allow us to conduct that experiment. Gays could serve in the military and then come out of the closet so we knew who they were.

One benefit of this was information: After a decade and a half of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" the results of the experiment are in. Gay soldiers don't have problems serving in the military, and the straight soliders don't have problems serving with the gay soldiers.

I think this will bring an end to the military's opposition to gays in the service, and Congress will follow their lead. It may not have happened as soon as it could have, but I think it will happen.

(Hat tip: Ronald Bailey)

I don't exactly have a master plan for blogging in 2007, but here are a few things I have in mind:

• Eminent domain blogging will continue with coverage of the Five Corners TIF in Des Plaines.
• I'm trying to bring on a co-blogger to cover the entertainment beat.
• I may actually get around to posting the little-awaited second half of my Drugs in the Workplace article.
• I'm thinking of tweaking the blog layout to make the main section a little wider so the photos will look better.
• More catblogging.