My Dog Ate It

I'm nothing if not a magnificent apologizer & excuse maker. I'm so good it'll be on my tombstone.

This semester I'm hitting on new girls and trying to get rid of this nasty case of herpes teaching new stuff and working on the book deal. Way time consuming.

You know how low my self-esteem is and how clingy I am. Don't leave me.

Back soon.

In Today's "No Shit" Department...

Stating the obvious...

Atomic Agency Sees Possible Link of Military to Iran Nuclear Work
By ELAINE SCIOLINO and WILLIAM J. BROAD
The International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iranian research into high explosives, a missile warhead design, and uranium processing were connected.

College Professor Cures Constipation

Here's an email I just sent to Joseph Ellis in response to his piece in today's NYT.

Dr. Ellis:

I'm trying to decide which activity I'm gonna enjoy more: one, crucifying in my history classes next week your op-ed in today's Times; two, tearing the op-ed out and shitting on it (I've already pissed on it); three, setting fire to your books I own.

Sincerely,
Professor Namewithheld

Here's some crap he shit out:

Sept. 11 does not rise to that [heightened] level of threat because, while it places lives and lifestyles at risk, it does not threaten the survival of the American republic....

What Patrick Henry once called "the lamp of experience" needs to be brought into the shadowy space in which we have all been living since Sept. 11. My tentative conclusion is that the light it sheds exposes the ghosts and goblins of our traumatized imaginations [yes, you read that right].... But it defies reason and experience to make Sept. 11 the defining influence on our foreign and domestic policy. History suggests that we have faced greater challenges and triumphed, and that overreaction is a greater danger than complacency.

Read it here. Email him at jellis@mtholyoke.edu.

Whachu Tahkin Bout, Hillary?

Hillary comes clean on why she said Republicans are running Congress like a plantation...

I was talking to a predominantly black audience. Isn't it obvious--I was pandering. It it were a Jewish audience, I would've said the Republicans were running Congress like a concentration camp. A Hispanic audience? I would've said it was being run like a landscaping company. Gay audience? Like a figure skating coach.

A cappella Ad

Just what *are* these people doing?

Look and Listen.

Is it length that doesn't matter? I forget.

Hitler would be my bitch! Al Pacino, too.

Want to know who you're bigger than? Sure you do.

On the Bubble

Soderbergh's latest...

An unlikely love triangle is born at a doll factory in a small Midwestern town. Long time employees Martha and Kyle have become friends by default in spite of their drastic age difference, but their dynamic is upset by the arrival of a new worker: young, attractive Rose. One morning, Rose is found dead, strangled in her own home. An investigation begins, one that will call into question our established assumptions about these characters and life in their small town.

Here's the trailer.

Beautiful v. Dutiful

Michael Barone's column today...

Our universities today have become our most intellectually corrupt institutions. University administrators must lie and deny that they use racial quotas and preferences in admissions, when they devote much of their energy to doing just that. They must pledge allegiance to diversity, when their campuses are among the least politically diverse parts of our society, with speech codes that penalize dissent and sometimes violent suppression of conservative opinion.

The Great War of 2007

• Niall Ferguson is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University

The devastating nuclear exchange of August 2007 represented not only the failure of diplomacy, it marked the end of the oil age. Some even said it marked the twilight of the West. Certainly, that was one way of interpreting the subsequent spread of the conflict as Iraq's Shi'ite population overran the remaining American bases in their country and the Chinese threatened to intervene on the side of Teheran.

Yet the historian is bound to ask whether or not the true significance of the 2007-2011 war was to vindicate the Bush administration's original principle of pre-emption. For, if that principle had been adhered to in 2006, Iran's nuclear bid might have been thwarted at minimal cost. And the Great Gulf War might never have happened.

"Go, Seahawks!" he said, pretending to care.

No Colts? No Patriots? No Manning? No Brady? No interest.