I've taken a bit of a blogging break for a few days, so permit me to jumble a few things together in one place. Not only have I been busy with some home improvement-type jobs, and extending my streak of attending only Indians losses this season to five games, but I just haven't had the inclination to blog much on the two main topics du jour, Bill Bennett and Jayson Blair, along with their various supporters and detractors. So much ink has been spilled over these two, and other bloggers have done such a great job documenting it, that if you're interested, Sullivan and Reynolds are two good places to start.
I've been interested to see Democratic presidential candidates cannibalizing each other, irritated by Democratic Senators filibustering judicial appointments ad nauseum, and amused by Texas Democratic representatives actually fleeing the state to avoid the vote on Republican gerrymandering of congressional districts that they so relished doing themselves when they were in the majority a few years ago.
Michael Ledeen is keeping track of what's going on in Iran.
And SARS, while not yet a real domestic issue, remains a concern, not least because we do not yet know the extent of the disease in China. I learned a few things from this WSJ piece by Claudia Rosett on the ways in which the nature of totalitarianism complicates and exacerbates the situation there.
And speaking of exacerbating things....What's worse than watching the Tribe get pounded 9-1 in a game that was essentially over in the third inning? Why, sitting through a two and a half hour rain delay so that the fourth inning isn't over till after 11 o'clock. With the good guys down 7-0 when the rains came, most of the 200 or so fans who stayed were hoping for a rainout, (and a rain check for the makeup game), and many (OK, me too) booed when they started to take the tarp off the infield to resume play. On the plus side, a fan's odds of getting a souvenir foul ball went up considerably after the delay, but that didn't prevent me from remaining O-for-my lifetime in foul balls retrieved. Sorry, borderline whining.
Posted by dan at May 16, 2003 06:27 PM