telescreen.org

By the by, I have a review of Salon de Ning up on NewYorkology.

New York hotels for $58 a night?  Too good to be true, you might say, and you'd be...well, exactly right.

NewYorkology investigates the newest Expedia ad, and finds them to be a little liberal with the truth.

Not quite things that make you go "hmmmm", but things that I thought were ultra-cool lately:

• Alan Taylor, a friend who writes the excellent Kokogiak, has come up with an amazing blog concept for Boston.com, where he works.  The Big Picture is just that, or rather, a selection of big pictures about a current news event.  It's stuff from the AP photos feed, but much, much higher-quality and more striking pictures, well-curated and assembled with a discerning eye.  Do check it out.
• Most. Awesome. Renovation. Ever. This NYT story made my jaw drop:

What Ms. Sherry didn’t realize until much later was that Mr. Clough had a number of other ideas about her apartment that he didn’t share with her. It began when Mr. Klinsky threw in his two cents, a vague request that a poem he had written for and about his family be lodged in a wall somewhere, Ms. Sherry said, “put in a bottle and hidden away as if it were a time capsule.”

And then the designer went a little nuts, and liberally salted the entire apartment with secret messages, hidden compartments, and obscure codes.  So cool.  (And check out the accompanying slideshow, too.)

• PBS host and guidebook writer Rick Steves recently went to Iran, and his pictures and blog posts about daily life there are fascinating.
• "The Symbols On My Flag (And What They Mean)"

So, um, hi.  It's been a while.

The usual blogger hand-waving and excuses apply -- busy life, crazy work schedule, houseguests, travel, et cetera.  Plus I decided not to write about politics for a while, for various reasons.  And without viewing the world through the prism of politics, there suddenly was a lot less that felt like it demanded my urgent, passionate response.  When Presidential and local politics is off-limits, there's less that just plain pissed me off, in other words.

Or I'd find stuff that I wanted to link to, but didn't have time right then, and I'd put it off, and put it off, and then the moment had passed.

Or I couldn't think of anything -- anything! -- interesting to say or write (Not that this stopped me before, but.)

But I'm gonna try to do better this time, baby.  Please, will you take me back?

I'm not a huge Chris Matthews fan, but I must admit this made me chuckle.  Wingnut goes on "Hardball" without doing anything more than skimming his talking points, gets his ass handed to him:

Headline a couple of days ago in the NY Sun:

Will He Be Hanged for Helping Israel?

The story's lede, with emphasis added by me:

A Palestinian Authority police officer accused of helping Israel with counterterrorism is facing death at the hands of a firing line unless a last-minute appeal to President Bush can save him.

So, no.  Shot, maybe, but not hanged.

Now this is depressing.

Why did Laura give the press conference?  Was George taking a nap or something?

Why's it not on the White House's "news"' page?  We have W honoring Cinco de Mayo, but nothing on Myanmar aside from giving Aung San Suu Kyi a gold medal today.

And Laura slammed the Myanmar junta's failure to warn the Burmese people of the storm:

      Q Quick follow on that. Do you think that they have blood on their hands       for that lack of warning?    

      MRS. BUSH: Well, I just think it's very, very important -- that we know already that they are very inept; that they have not been able to govern in a way that lets their company -- country, for one thing, build an economy. This is a country that's rich in natural resources. Their natural resources are being depleted as they sell them off, as far as we       can tell from the outside, for the financial benefit of the regime itself and not for the good of the people.

Yep.  Very inept.  Especially when I think about her husband's lying about how "nobody anticipated" how bad Katrina would be -- after being briefed on the possible impact, about how he waited 24 hours before he cut his vacation short, and how he hobnobbed with country stars while people were drowning in an American city.

You want ineptitude?  You want to call the Myanmar regime inept?  We'll show you inept.

Bring it on.

Today is Law Day, when we honor the rule of law and the fundamental role it plays in preserving liberty in our nation and in all free societies.

Some good ideas:

• an MP3 player shaped like a cassette tape -- with a magnetic head so you can play it in a cassette deck;
• the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which created all sorts of nifty and innovative sound effects, but didn't live to see its fiftieth birthday;
• a description (with nice photos) of a dinner at El Bulli, the temple of molecular gastronomy;

and one shockingly bad one:  running for Congress (even though there's a picture of the Supreme Court building on your campaign website), meeting with Nazis and speaking at a birthday dinner for Hitler, and then saying you don't know enough about the tenets of National Socialism (say what you will, Dude, at least it's an ethos) to decide whether you favor or oppose it.

Illinois Nazis.  I hate Illinois Nazis.

I know I've highlighted some great newspaper corrections in this space, but I may have to retire the category after this one:

CORRECTION: This submission misstates that one Dalai Lama admitted to having sex with hundreds of men and women while knowing that he had AIDS. Additionally, the submission misstates that many monks participated in the dismemberment of female bodies. In fact, there is no factual evidence to substantiate either of these claims. Spectator regrets the error.

Incidentally, after receiving what I can only estimate to be huge amounts of crap for this article (which would seem to be entirely deserved), the Spectator pulled the entire article from their site, which is why the above link goes to a Google cache of the original.

killbots_want_peace, originally uploaded by darkpony.

From my friend darkpony, who kicks major ass.

(Look familiar? He also did this rendition of the New Yorker's Eustace Tilley character a while back.)

Some linky goodness for your Monday-morning perusal:

• amazing article on the secret life of elevators...and just how hellish it'd be to stuck in one for a long time (Milgram would be proud);
• if Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos had moderated the Lincoln/Douglas debates;
• Amy Langfield at NewYorkology points out just what a wonderfully serendipitous city New York is; and
• "Describe Marsellus Wallace to me, pray."

Because it is awesome: Numbers Station Bingo. 

More on Joe Lieberman, Democrat Independent egotist from Connecticut:  he wants to keynote the Republican Convention, and says Rush Limbaugh has a big heart.  (Cue flashback tape of the greatest hits of hateful Limbaugh screeds in your head -- I know I don't need to go digging for links for this one.)

I know the real reason he's still putatively caucusing with the Democrats -- he wants his precious committee assignments, which are seniority-based -- but I wonder how he justifies this kind of alignment in public?  How can he agree to caucus with Democrats and enjoy their privileges (such as they are) when he devotes his energies to tearing down the party and its candidates?  Why doesn't he break for the GOP, which he clearly prefers?  Where's his sense of self-respect?

A trio of interesting Obama-related stories I've run across lately:

• Obama refuses to pay "street money" machine-politics bribes in PA, may suffer as a result;
• Joe Lieberman, being interviewed on home turf Fox News, isn't sure if Obama's a Marxist;
• GOP Kentucky Congressman Geoff Davis (just s the name, don't you?) refers to Obama as "boy."  I especially like how some of the commentators on that Kentucky-politics blog are trying to say it's no big deal, because Obama's younger than Davis.  (Memo to wingnuts:  Obama is three years younger than Davis.)  Why is this not getting the press that the "bitter" remark is getting?  Oh, I forgot: Hillary's campaign and many media outlets are taking their cues from Matt Drudge, rather than, um, proper reading comprehension.
• See also Josh Marshall's excellent response to the whole kerfuffle.  Worth reading in full, definitely, but quoting the meat of it here:

What I do know is that this basic thought, often expressed in much less charitable ways, is commonplace in Democratic policy and political circles. And I have little doubt they've been expressed many times by both of the Clintons and her advisors. So speaking for myself I've spent too much time over, what, 15 years now? ... defending both Clintons from similarly ginned up nonsense to have much energy left to help out as they pull the same puffed up outrage act against another Democrat. I guess I'm just not feeling it.

With the Wright business and now with this, the more nuanced version of the Clinton line has been that what 'we' think is not really the point. It's what Republicans will do with it in the fall. And that's a real concern that I definitely have. I won't deny it. I've never thought Obama was a perfect candidate. But as we get deeper into the primary calendar, increasingly so, this 'what the Republicans will do' line has become more of a simulacrum, or a license, if you will, to do what Republicans actually do do. That is to say, to grab for political advantage by peddling stereotypes about Democrats and liberals that are really no less offensive than the ones we're talking about about Americans from small town and rural America.

And seeing Hillary go on about how Obama has contempt for folks in small town America, how he's elitist, well ... no, it's not because I think she's either. I never have. But after seeing her hit unfairly with just the same stuff for years, it just encapsulates the last three-plus months of her campaign which I can only describe as a furious descent into nonsense and self-parody. Part of it makes me want to cry. But at this point all I can really do is laugh.

I see that the Procol Harum court fight has been resolved:

LONDON, England (AP) -- The lead singer of British band Procol Harum has won an appeal court judgment awarding him full royalties for the band's iconic hit, "A Whiter Shade of Pale."

Britain's Court of Appeal ruled in rock star Gary Brooker's favor, overturning an earlier lower court decision awarding the group's former organist 40 percent of the royalties from the song.

The Court of Appeal said that Matthew Fisher, who played the song's haunting organ theme, was entitled to co-authorship. However, the court said he will receive no money from past or future royalties because he waited too long to make his claim.

...but hey, if we're doing things like determining who wrote something, shouldn't this guy get a credit, too?

It's been around teh intarweb a lot lately, but this series of photos showing the processing of the Space Shuttle between landing and launch was pretty interesting.

And that led me to this nifty article about the "shuttleski" -- the Buran, the Soviet answer to the shuttle.

Oh, this is strange.  Wonder what was going on?

Welcome, Gawker readers picture-viewers. 

(Photoblog's over here, by the by.)

Things I learned today from the New York Times:

• The St. Honore Patisserie (which I can vouch for, incidentally) in my old neighborhood makes some good-looking macaroons;
• The "cloak of innocence" is emblazoned with a flaming skull made out of rhinestones;
• The world's earliest sound recording (from 1860!) has been uncovered.

Woo-hoo!, originally uploaded by Vidiot.

I made the Flickr Blog yesterday!

(The shot in particular is here, and here's the full Easter Parade set.)

From the News & Observer's David Menconi, a nice piece on what's become of The Connells, my favorite North Carolina band. 

Every summer, I feel the need to break out their music, which seems designed for blasting out open car windows.  Nowadays, I don't have a car, so headphones and my home speakers will have to do.  But it still makes me remember what it was like to have a good band from your hometown that made everyone proud.

And I walked, and I breathed, and I tried to not let it change me.
Don't it make you wonder, man?

Statue Bunny, #2, originally uploaded by Vidiot.

Nice article in the Gruniad about rickrolling -- and I especially enjoyed the interview with Astley himself at the end.

I just love that there's an Alfred Hitchcock cameo that apparently wasn't spotted until three years ago -- almost fifty years after North By Northwest's release