GREETINGS, EARTHLINGS! As Ann points out below, August is a slow news time. In my day job, I’m a journalist (yes . . . a member of the dreaded MSM), and for us, August is undoubtedly the cruellest month. Everyone except baseball players goes on vacations, so we have no summits, reports, or even scandals to keep our editors happy. Story pitches take on an ever-more desperate hue as the month wears on . . . “No, really, Ted, the Australian Toe Weevil poses a clear economic threat to development in Southeast Asia!”

But at least one newsworthy event happened today: Peter Jennings died. The death of any human being is deeply tragic, of course. Peter Jennings’ death will touch more lives than most, and not merely because many of us are worrying whether we quit smoking quite soon enough.

Many people spent more time with Peter Jennings than with their adult children. I don’t watch television news except during big disasters; I find it too shallow and graphic to be useful. But for many people, Peter Jennings was their point of contact with the wider world.

And his death represents the end of an era. No one will ever occupy the place in the world that Brokaw, Jennings, and Rather did. Americans are no longer limited to three channels, nor forced to take their news in discreet bites between 5-7. The world is probably better for it, but something–if only a connection to our past–has been lost.

LEECHES, OBOES, EXTRAVAGANT CLOTHES CONTRARY TO ALBANIAN TASTES – Eric Muller checks out the world of postal regulations.

HELLO, INSTAPUNDIT READERS. Hello, Michael. Yes, things will be different here this week. Not only are we not Glenn, but there are three of us. The same three of us co-blogged last fall during the final run-up to Election Day, so, in one way, we’re practiced in the art of Instapundit guest-blogging, but, in another way, it’s going to be completely different, because there is no obvious topic to preoccupy us. It’s a slow week in August, and, with luck, it will stay that way. That makes it more likely that the idiosyncratic interests of us three bloggers will be on full display. You might think that, getting the chance to write on Instapundit, a blogger would have a set of opinions ready to promote, but in fact, I’m coming to this task this morning without a single subject planned — except this one: Thanks, Glenn, for letting me play Instapundit for a week.

THANKS TO GLENN REYNOLDS for giving me, Megan McArdle, and Ann Althouse the keys to Instapundit while he’s on vacation. We’ll try to keep things interesting around here. The three of us have somewhat different reading tastes than Glenn, so this week’s Instalanches will fall on new territory.