HERE’S MORE on the Memphis Police blogger subpoena. Plus, finding “Dirk Diggler.” Not a lot of love for Memphis Police Director Larry Godwin in the comments to the Commercial Appeal article.
If I were in litigation with the Memphis Police, I can think of a lot of discovery I’d like to do . . . .
UPDATE: Hmm. The blog in question has a petition to fire Larry Godwin online. This goes back to May, and thus may account for his desire to “out” the people behind the blog.
ACTIVATING CANCER-FIGHTING CELLS, with nanotechnology.
IN THE MAIL: Alan MacFarlane’s Japan Through the Looking Glass.
Knoxville, Tennessee.
UPDATE: Reader Sean Malloy emails: “After watching your photo posts for the past couple of months, I now have to get one of these lenses. Damn you!” It’s the Nikon fisheye.
That’s Commerce Clause god Brannon Denning on the left. For fun, I dummied this picture up on Photoshop like a double-page profile spread in Vanity Fair, with the caption “Brannon Denning Wants You To Care About the Commerce Clause. And He’s right.” Followed by a discussion of beer and the Commerce Clause, a surprisingly important subject, actually. Yes, I am a geek. But you knew that.
MARC AMBINDER: Obama Team Begins Work On Presidential Transition.
UPDATE: Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!
“HE’S GOING TO COMFORT AND PROTECT US.” Well, that’s what Presidents are for these days, I guess . . . .
THE WORLD POWERS UP, while America powers down.
TECHCRUNCH: Nobody can make money on social network ads.
POLITICO: GOP losing the new-media war. Yes. McCain’s campaign is good at blogger outreach, but that’s one bright spot against an otherwise unrelieved landscape of how-we-did-it-last-time. It’s just more of the staleness and lack of creativity that has marked the GOP for the last couple of election cycles.
Of course, the press is much more willing to be influenced by leftie alternative-media. See Patrick Hynes on The Leftwing Blog-Leftwing Media Nexus.
UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch emails: “To win elections the Republicans are going to have to defeat the media…not co-opt it. That they can’t figure that out is a sign that their judgement is dangerously suspect.”
INTRODUCING INEXPENSIVE HUMANOID ROBOTS. To be followed, I suppose, by discussions of robot rights.
GOOD FOR HIM: Obama to demand more from Europe in Berlin speech. “U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama is expected to call on Europe to do more in hotspots like Afghanistan when he speaks in Berlin on Thursday in his only formal address of a week-long foreign tour.”
BOINGBOING TV debuts the BBTV World series.
FORGET THE DARWIN AWARDS: It’s time for the Dorwin Award.
A VERY COOL baseball photo.
“OIL THIRST: Will it transform the election?” Only if oil prices stay high, which is looking iffy.
UPDATE: Obviously some people think it matters:
Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and other liberal leaders on Capitol Hill are gripped by cold-sweat terror. If they permit a vote on offshore drilling, they know they will lose when Blue Dogs and oil-patch Democrats defect to the GOP position of increasing domestic energy production. So the last failsafe is to shut down Congress.
Majority Leader Reid has decided that deliberation is too taxing for “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” This week he cut off serious energy amendments to his antispeculation bill. Then Senate Appropriations baron Robert Byrd abruptly canceled a bill markup planned for today where Republicans intended to press the issue. Mr. Byrd’s counterpart in the House, David Obey, is enforcing a similar lockdown. Speaker Pelosi says she won’t allow even a debate before Congress’s August recess begins in eight days.
She and Mr. Reid are cornered by substance. The upward pressure on oil prices is caused by rising world-wide consumption and limited growth in supplies. Yet at least 65% of America’s undiscovered, recoverable oil, and 40% of its natural gas, is hostage to the Congressional drilling moratorium.
Is this issue a winner for the Republicans? I don’t know, but the Democrats are sure acting like they think it is.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Truman, 1948. What more can I say? (With apologies to Jan Deutsch.)
LONG-TERM WRINKLE REDUCTION with carbon dioxide lasers.
A LOOK AT who’s comfortable with secession. “Fascinating(ly stupid).”
UPDATE: Related thoughts here.
ROSS DOUTHAT: “Yes, of course the Hitler comparisons are absurd, but I’d really like to know which genius on the Obama campaign thought it would be a good idea to have their candidate conduct a major campaign rally in Europe with three months to go till the election and their candidate, despite an incredibly favorable climate and a fumbling opponent, still clinging to a 2-4 point lead in the polls?”
UPDATE: A Princess Diana connection.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Luring a German crowd with rock bands, brats, and beer. Hey, it’s worked for him before, and the press left out the rock band part.
IS THIS TRUE? To Sell Plug-In Hybrids, You’ve Gotta Make ’em Sexy. To sell ’em for six figures, yeah. To sell ’em for $40K, maybe. To sell ’em for under $30K, I don’t think so.
IN THE NEW YORK TIMES: Harvest The Sun — From Space:
AS we face $4.50 a gallon gas, we also know that alternative energy sources — coal, oil shale, ethanol, wind and ground-based solar — are either of limited potential, very expensive, require huge energy storage systems or harm the environment. There is, however, one potential future energy source that is environmentally friendly, has essentially unlimited potential and can be cost competitive with any renewable source: space solar power.
Science fiction? Actually, no — the technology already exists. A space solar power system would involve building large solar energy collectors in orbit around the Earth. These panels would collect far more energy than land-based units, which are hampered by weather, low angles of the sun in northern climes and, of course, the darkness of night.
Once collected, the solar energy would be safely beamed to Earth via wireless radio transmission, where it would be received by antennas near cities and other places where large amounts of power are used. The received energy would then be converted to electric power for distribution over the existing grid. Government scientists have projected that the cost of electric power generation from such a system could be as low as 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is within the range of what consumers pay now.
I’m in.
JAMES JOYNER: Demographic Trends Favor Republicans. The conventional wisdom is otherwise.
LANNY DAVIS: Confessions of an Anti-Iraq War Democrat: Memories of a Purple Finger. Meanwhile, reader Peter Ingemi points to his prediction of 2005 and suggests that the Grand Revision is well underway.
JOHN KASS ON THE MEDIA:
You don’t laugh because you can’t make fun of Obama. The ground would swallow you whole. . . . Who needs foreign policy expertise when you’re so cool, you risk a three-point shot and make it on camera?
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE: Anyway, that’s not so cool as Kass makes it sound. My high-school friend Steve Proffitt once made a more than full-court shot — from the opposite end of the Maryville College gym, as he walked out the door — over his shoulder, all the way to the far goal, nothing but net. He was so cool, he didn’t even see it as he continued out the door without looking back. Now that’s cool. And if he were running for President, I’d vote for him, though not because of his basketball skills. Instead he’s a software baron, sadly enough for the Republic. But then, that field attracts more talent than politics, these days . . . .
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