"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them."

Harold Pinter on the occasion of accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature. Pinter, we're told, was "[d]ressed in black, bristling with controlled fury."

Mr. Pinter attacked American foreign policy since World War II, saying that while the crimes of the Soviet Union had been well documented, those of the United States had not. "I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road," he said. "Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be, but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self-love."

Word of the Year.

Podcast!

Madonna on Letterman.

Did you watch Madonna on Letterman last night -- complete with horseys? She was her usual stilted talk-show-self, and she looked weirdly shriveled inside a goofily high-collared purple sweater coat. I liked when she said "Is my necklace on straight?" as a way to get everyone to look at her breasts -- the necklace had a long dangling strand that could line up in her cleavage. And I liked when she tried to instruct Dave on how to toilet train his toddler and to shame him about letting the kid pass the two year mark without learning the highly prized skill. The Madonna technique: deprive the wayward lad of diapers and let him get disgusted with himself. Chances Dave will try that method? O.

The wisdom of the soft launch.

Lately, we've seen all too much of what a disaster it can be to make a big spectacle out of launching a new website with grandiose claims of major innovations and accomplishments that readers can't see on the page. It's refreshing to read a kind note of approval for a graceful soft launch.

Making small talk.

NPR has a piece about how to make small talk at an office party. Actually, I think if you hate small talk, the author they have effusing about small talk will probably just make you feel more negative about having to make small talk -- and she tells you right off that having a negative attitude will totally wreck your ability to make small talk. Anyway, the segment begins with some nice clips from "The Office." And, beware, it ends with some excruciating singing from Renee Zellweger, singing at an office party in "Bridget Jones's Diary." It's supposed to be hilarious but it's trying way too hard to be hilarious, as though they really don't trust us at all to recognize bad singing.

Sugary beverages.

The NYT begins an article on anti-soda litigation this way:

It is lunchtime at Grover Cleveland High School in Portland, Ore. A steady stream of thirsty teenagers poke dollars into the three Coca-Cola machines in the hallway. By the end of lunch period, the Coke With Lime, Cherry Coke and Vanilla Coke are sold out.

Elsa Peterson, a senior at Grover Cleveland and the student body president, said she knew she could bring healthier juices from home. "But it's easy to walk up with a dollar and just get a pop."

That, says Stephen Gardner, staff lawyer for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, is exactly the problem. In an age of soaring obesity rates among children, he argues that soda and other sugary beverages are harmful to students' health and that selling those drinks in schools sends a message that their regular consumption is perfectly fine.

In a lawsuit they plan to file in the next few months, Mr. Gardner and half a dozen other lawyers, several of them veterans of successful tobacco litigation, will seek to ban sales of sugary beverages in schools.

Yeah, I know: blah, blah, blah, too much litigation, blah, blah. But the point I want to make is: Since when is juice not a sugary beverage?

Parents and schools should teach kids one simple rule: If you are thirsty, drink water.

"Dean's take on Iraq makes even less sense than the scream in Iowa."

Says Rep. Jim Marshall, a Democrat. A lot of Democrats are worried about the effect of the Dean style of anti-war talk -- the effect on the fortunes of the party, that is.

"But what if all of this vocabulary -- winning, losing, victory, defeat -- is simply misplaced?"

Anne Applebaum writes about war and language.

Protesting military recruiters on campus.

Lawprof Dan Pinello gave me permission to quote this email he just sent to our list of conlawprofs:

In today's New York Times, Linda Greenhouse reports that the Supreme Court is likely to uphold the Solomon Amendment. However, she relates an interesting exchange from oral argument:

"Asked by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg what a ... school 'could do concretely while the [military] recruiter is in the room,' [Solicitor General Paul D.] Clement replied that as long as the school granted equal access, 'They could put signs on the bulletin board next to the door. They could engage in speech. They could help organize student protests.'"

I plan to rely on this representation to the Supreme Court by the chief legal advocate for the Solomon Amendment. As a member of my school's Committee on Cultural Pluralism and Diversity, I will help organize protests every time military recruiters set foot on campus.

I urge all of you also to follow the Solicitor General's lead.

I note Dahlia Litwick's report on this part of the argument:

Clement, flashing his counterculture creds, suggests they could "put up signs on bulletin boards, give speeches, organize a student protest."

He briefly loses Kennedy. "The school can organize a protest where everyone jeers at the recruiters and the applicant? That's equal access?" the justice fumes. Clement stands firm. Yes. Cue Scalia the wiseacre: "You are not going to be a military recruiter are you?" Scalia and Kennedy don't want to allow student jeering. But Clement would permit it. "This statute gives a right to equal access," he says. After that, recruiters are on their own.

I suppose that at some point a protest would interfere with the recruiting and violate the law, but the "more speech" remedy should be available to the law schools. I'd like to see those who object to the "don't ask, don't tell policy" be respectful to the students who are seeking out this public service job and to the military recruiters who did not make what is a statutory policy. Hostility aimed at these persons is wrong and should backfire. The important thing is to present the civil, reasoned argument for allowing gay persons to serve in the military. This is an appealing and sound argument, and it is most persuasive when it is presented in a calm, articulate way. I'd like to see the law schools hold symposia where the issue can be discussed in an intellectual environment, with good advocates from the military to explain the policy and debate with their opponents.

Not necessarily not dead.

Al-Jazeera withdraws some reassurance about the continuing existence of Osama bin Laden.

The Roberts Court style.

I just read Linda Greenhouse's description's of the "lopsided argument during which the justices appeared strongly inclined to uphold [the] federal law":

[T]he law school coalition's lawyer, E. Joshua Rosenkranz, had difficulty gaining traction as he urged the justices to uphold the appeals court's judgment that the Solomon Amendment amounted to "compelled speech" by forcing the law schools to convey the military's message. Chief Justice Roberts made his disagreement unmistakable.

"I'm sorry, but on 'compelled speech,' nobody thinks that this law school is speaking through those employers who come onto its campus for recruitment," the chief justice said. "Nobody thinks the law school believes everything that the employers are doing or saying."

Roberts seems to have instantly emerged as the dominant voice at oral argument. And he seems to have a way of slamming lawyers in the face with his own clearly stated opinion. Tell me why this is wrong, right now, or forget about it. I hope to see much clearer written opinions from the rejuvenated Court too.

-5.

Yeah: -5.

The concealed carry law in Wisconsin.

Last night, the Wisconsin Senate passed a bill to legalize the concealed carrying of weapons. This has been a hot button issue around here for years.

“Concealed weapons in Wisconsin have been illegal for over 100 years, and we have one of the safest states in the whole country,” Sen. Judith Robson, D-Beloit, said....

“I can’t imagine Halloween on State Street. … What a disaster that would be for Madison,” Robson said. “I can’t imagine going to the mall knowing the person next to me may have a concealed [weapon].”...

“This is an important issue for people who want to protect themselves [and to have] control of their own destiny,” Sen. David Zien, R-Eau Claire, said.

Choose your fantasy.

Franken at the Barrymore.

Al Franken was in town to do a live broadcast of his Air America radio show, here on State Street, at the Barrymore Theatre. I hadn't noticed that this was happening, or I might have felt I head out into the cold yesterday so I could tell you about it. But The Isthmus has a good report, with a bloggish set of pictures:

The show was on stage from 11 am through 1 pm, with Franken speaking to a parade of local lefty pundits and Democratic politicians, such as Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, State Rep. Mark Pocan, and Gov. Jim Doyle (via phone). The theater was standing-room only, with nearly one thousand officially ticketed attendees. "I think we packed the place," says Brian Turaney, who is the program director for The MIC.

The live-broadcast was well-received by the politically-liberal crowd. "It's a great event whenever Al comes to town," Turaney explains. "It's great, especially on a cold winter day, to get together and see how many people are like-minded. It's great to see how many people came out and how happy everybody was."

Yeah, it was really cold. Drawing a big crowd for a 3-hour radio show is pretty impressive. But this is Madison! We're not sissies about the cold, and we love the rousing lefty politics.

The crowd is very enthusiastic, applauding regularly and excitedly at Franken's punchlines and rhetorical flourishes made by the political guests.

That's what ever comedian wants to hear: how loud the crowd ... clapped.

The age range of the crowd is diverse, ranging from the myspace Generation to the Greatest Generation. It is also overwhelmingly white and middle class (at least in superficial appearance), certainly reflective of the radio station's listenership. This makes sense, given the need for many audience members to take (at least) several hours out of their work day to attend. In terms of general appearance, conservative naysayers envisioning "hippies" or whatever the fantasy du jour is (as is often the case among those negatively commenting on liberal gatherings of this type) have little to work with.

Is that what you conservative naysayers envision? Well, at least we know that (liberal?) journalists envision conservative naysayers envisioning Franken's audience as somehow rotten-looking.

It sounds as though most of the show was trotting out the local politicians. Franken is a radio genius if he made that interesting. I remember how Bruce Springsteen -- that denizen of Franken's iPod -- reacted when he had to share the stage with Governor Doyle: "I think this will be the governor's last experience as my opening act."

UPDATE: I'm mixing up the Barrymore and the Orpheum! Sorry. The Barrymore is way over on the East Side and would have required a car ride.

Franken's iPod.

Al Franken was in town last night, and The Daily Cardinal -- a UW student newspaper -- got a chance to do an interview. Here's one thing:

DC: You’ve been a known Deadhead and even had Phil Lesh on your show. What kind of music have you been listening to lately?

AF: Well on my iPod, I have some Grateful Dead, of course, and some Guster that my son gave to me. REM and Bruce Springsteen. You know, the classics.

MORE: The Capital Times uses the occasion to opine on Franken's possible run for the Senate:

Franken is not sure whether he will make the race. But if he does, he will be a far more serious contender than his right-wing critics would have Americans believe. Sure, he comes from the world of show business. But, by comparison, say, with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Franken has a significantly more impressive track record as a political activist and a commentator on national and international affairs.

In many senses, Franken reminds us of an entertainer-turned-politician we did not agree with but whom we had to respect: former President Ronald Reagan. Reagan got deeply involved in conservative politics years before he entered the 1966 California gubernatorial race. Reagan was ridiculed by liberals and many in the media but he beat them every time because he actually understood politics and was firm in his beliefs.

If Franken seeks the Senate seat from Minnesota, he will be ridiculed by conservatives and many in the media but he too understands politics and is firm in his beliefs. And, we suspect, Franken would hand Coleman the defeat he should have gotten from Paul Wellstone.

Hmmm.... Do show biz types make better true believers?

Bad Christmas songs.

They're hating on Christmas recordings over at Lean Left. And don't get all John Gibson about it. They don't object to any of the traditional carols. They're lighting into the Santa Claus-n-chestnuts material. I don't hang around in stores enough to get fed up with these things, so I don't have any particular recordings that drive me up the wall. Do you?

Today's the oral argument in Rumsfeld v. FAIR.

The NYT reports:

"This case is not about whether military recruiters will be barred at the campus gates," [Joshua Rosenkranz, the attorney for FAIR] said. "Congress had a law on the books that guaranteed entry to campus. But that was not what Congress really wanted, so it passed a new law.

"What Congress really wants is to squelch even the most symbolic elements of the law schools' resistance to disseminating the military's message."...

But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. sounded skeptical at one point. The Solomon Amendment, he said, "doesn't insist that you do anything."

That's an awfully skimpy story, padded with the info that the Solomon who gave his name to the law was Representative Gerald B. H. Solomon, "a conservative Republican from Glens Falls, N.Y., who served more than eight years in the Marines and successfully pushed to deny federal student aid to men who failed to register for the draft" and who "challenged Representative Patrick Kennedy, Democrat of Rhode Island, to 'step outside' to settle a disagreement over a proposed assault weapons ban, which Mr. Solomon opposed." Isn't it always relevant that some old conservative was a cranky bastard?

Here's a little more quoting from the oral argument, from FOXNews:

An impatient Justice Sandra Day O'Connor interrupted Rosenkranz, reminding him that "the government takes the position that the law school is entirely free to convey its message to everyone who comes. So how is the message affected in that environment?"

She added that the law school can tell "every student who enters the room” that they find the policy immoral.

But, Rosenkranz replied that when the students enter the room they are receiving dueling ideas. "The answer of the students is we don’t believe you. We read your message as being there are two tiers ...," he said.

Dueling ideas? Aren't law students especially good at decoding conflicting ideas? Yes, but the point is that by having to provide the facilities, the law schools are being forced to express a second idea that they don't agree with, that conflicts with the thing they want to say.

"The reason they don’t believe you," Roberts said, cutting the attorney off, "is because you’re willing to take the money. What you’re saying is, 'This is a message we believe in strongly, but we don’t believe in it to the tune of $100 million.'"

In this view, the law schools are not really even forced to contradict themselves. The message they send is twofold, but both things are true: We oppose discrimination based on sexual orientation, but not enough to give up $100 million. You're not forced to say anything you don't believe, just motivated to do something, and anyone watching what you do can draw the inference.

"Nobody thinks the law school is speaking through those employers that come onto its campus for recruitment. Everybody knows those are the employers. Nobody thinks the law school believes everything the employers are doing or saying," Roberts said.

This is the government's strongest argument, isn't it? The schools are really trying to control what messages the students receive and are not really suffering from having it seem as though they are expressing that message. The law schools' rejection of the military's message is, in fact, one of their best known opinions. The military's forced entry into a school's territory amplifies a school's message of opposition to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

And, moreover, this lawsuit has amplified that message. The law schools have used this litigation to shine a spotlight on the federal government's harsh use of overwhelming power, power that the Court will almost surely uphold.

UPDATE: Dahlia Lithwick has lots of quotes from the argument, including this indicating that Justice Breyer will side with the government:

Breyer telegraphs his vote when he says that the remedy to bad speech "is not less speech. It's more speech." Breyer adds, "I can't find anywhere in the record where a student believes this speech is the school's. I can't even find a recruiter who told a student they can't join the military if they're gay."

Dahlia notes that at one point, it's the liberal Justices who are beating on FAIR's lawyer. (Only Justice Souter seems to support him.) She concludes: "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth. The law schools have no case."

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here's Linda Greenhouse's description of the "lopsided argument during which the justices appeared strongly inclined to uphold [the] federal law":

[T]he law school coalition's lawyer, E. Joshua Rosenkranz, had difficulty gaining traction as he urged the justices to uphold the appeals court's judgment that the Solomon Amendment amounted to "compelled speech" by forcing the law schools to convey the military's message. Chief Justice Roberts made his disagreement unmistakable.

"I'm sorry, but on 'compelled speech,' nobody thinks that this law school is speaking through those employers who come onto its campus for recruitment," the chief justice said. "Nobody thinks the law school believes everything that the employers are doing or saying."

Was Alito's father born in Italy?

The official White House story about Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito includes the detail that his father was born in Italy. Talk Left marshalls the evidence that this isn't true, that he was born in New Jersey. What gives? Alito supporters should address this discrepancy immediately.

"I was under the impression that these people... generally understood what this thing called 'blog' was all about."

"Clearly, I was wrong."

"In Somalia you could be a warlord."

The clients of a seemingly respectable accountant react to the news that he is a "batshit crazy, insanely bitter, deranged and completely obsessed stalker who preys on the dogs of others and frightens small children off the internet."

Cheering up the Germans.

The NYT has an article about that ad campaign to cheer up Germans:

Whether this is an appropriate way to battle the national melancholy - and opinions vary greatly on this issue - the very existence of such a campaign, reportedly the first of its sort in this country, is a sign of what is generally recognized here: that Germany is indeed in a sour mood, its economy in the doldrums, its financial deficits too high and none of its leaders strong or visionary enough to lead the way out....

[I]t has now settled pretty deeply in the collective awareness that unification has been an economic and a spiritual failure. It cost, and still costs, a staggering amount of money in financial transfers from the former West to the poorer and smaller former East, where the money seems to have vanished without a trace.

Now, the westerners are unhappy because the disappearance of all that money is seen as the root of Germany's economic stagnation and high unemployment. The easterners are notoriously unhappy because life is less secure than it used to be under Communism, and, as this cycle continues, the westerners are irritated that the easterners are unhappy....

[Critics of the ad campaign argue] that what Germany needs is not singers and athletes (and literary critics, television anchor women and 8-year-olds) telling them to cheer up, but serious attention to the country's real problems.

The intellectual weekly Die Zeit heaped scorn on the campaign, labeling it "propaganda" and excoriating its creators in particular for what the paper deemed their "tasteless" use of the Holocaust Memorial as a backdrop to the "You are Germany" chants of the gay and handicapped people.

"Unemployment is depicted as a consequence of the bad mood, a private phenomenon, which at any given time could be corrected by self-contemplation and positive thinking," wrote the paper's commentator, Jens Jessen.

This story got me thinking about Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech. People who are already unhappy about the economy do not like to hear that they ought to solve the problem by not being unhappy.

"Abu Zubaydah was partial to Kit Kats."

We plied the captured al Qaeda leader with candies, but that was after "he was slapped, grabbed, made to stand long hours in a cold cell, and finally handcuffed and strapped feet up to a water board until after 0.31 seconds he begged for mercy and began to cooperate."

Howard Dean compares Iraq not just to Vietnam, but to Watergate.

Here. We've heard the stock comparison to Vietnam many times, of course, but why bring up Watergate -- except to let the world see that you're drooling over the idea of impeachment? Doesn't the chairman of Democratic National Committee have something better to do -- like inspire confidence that Democrats can be trusted with national security?

"Conservatives should study the ideas and arguments that prevail on the left."

"There is always something to learn from these arguments, if only which way the wind of resentment is now blowing. And lifting your eyes from this joyless stuff, you will thank God that you are a conservative."

So says Roger Scruton, in part 2 of Right Reason's interview, that marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of "The Meaning of Conservatism."

Do you seek joy from politics? Or are you just lucky if the politics you embrace in the pursuit of something other than joy turn out to inspire joy? Do you worry about people who find (or seek) joy in politics?

But Scruton is worrying about people who express resentment in politics. Is resentment your political magnet? Or have you just found that the politics you've embraced for some other reason brim with resentment?

Rumsfeld v. FAIR.

The Supreme Court hears argument today in the Solomon Amendment case, with the audio to be released immediately. Expect lots of commentary here and elsewhere later today. For now, the best on-line review of the issues that I know of is last week's debate between Yale lawprof William Eskridge and George Mason Dean Daniel Polsby.

The great Blogspot outage of '05.

I don't know why all the Blogspot blogs went blank last night for a few hours. Did I freak out? No. It helped that I could see my "compose" and "edit posts" pages, so I didn't worry that my writing was lost. I just turned off the computer, did some work, fell asleep early, and slept eight hours. I did wake for a minute during that long sleep, and it did occur to me that I could turn on the computer and see if we were back, but I didn't. It's nice to see it's all working now.

Do I hate Blogger now? No. This is the first significant problem since last spring. Anywhere else would have its own problems, and Blogger is too big to fail. Right? But I would like an explanation.

UPDATE: Blogger explains the outage.

"'London Bridge Is Falling Down' ... contains coded references to the medieval custom of burying people alive in the foundations of bridges."

That's a line in a NYT review of the new "Norton Anthology of Children's Literature." But there's no further information. Intriguing!

"The commander in chief was doing a dignified little head-nod to the beat."

The Washington Post thinks the President should have been more demonstrative, but you can imagine what the pictures in the paper would look like if he in fact stood up and danced. The song, by the way, was "Nutbush City Limits," the singer, Melissa Etheridge, the honoree -- of course -- Tina Turner.

Weblog awards.

Check out 2005 The Weblog Award nominations. This blog is nominated in the Best Law Blog category. And Audible Althouse is nominated in the Best Podcast category. Vote!

ADDED: Things are cranking away slowly over there at the moment, so try again later if you have trouble.

You better get yourself together.

Those three posts I put up before leaving the house this morning look awfully dark. Is Althouse in a gloomy mood? Rottweilers and face-eating Labradors? Oh, my!

I left the house for the first time since Saturday and had snow a squirrel's-length deep to clear off the car. I put my bag in the trunk and took out the brush. I made sure I had the keys in my hand before I slammed the trunk. I got all that snow off the car and reached into my coat pocket: no keys! How to get into the house for my other key? Damn! It's 3 degrees. I was sure I had the keys in my hand and that I slipped them into my coat pocket. Did I drop them into the deep snow behind the car?

Ah, I see the little black hole in the snow. I'm so happy to pick up the keys with my gloveless hands and rub off the snow with my sleeves. I drive into work, my hands getting colder and colder. The gloves -- gloves the color of my crashed car Li'l Greenie -- only make it worse. I've got those John Lennon discs in the CD player:

Instant karma’s gonna get you
Gonna knock you right on the head
You better get yourself together
Pretty soon you’re gonna be dead

Suicide and the face transplant.

The donor in the face transplant case was a suicide: Is this an ethical problem? More significantly: Is it an ethical problem that the recipient came about her need for a face transplant through her own attempt at suicide?

The horrible detail:

Transplant patient Isabelle Dinoire, from Valenciennes, north of Amiens, was reported to have overdosed on pills last May following a row with one of her two daughters. As she lay unconscious, part of her nose, her mouth and chin were bitten off by her Labrador-cross dog, Tania.

UPDATE: The woman's doctor denies that she had tried to commit suicide.

Alito and "one person, one vote" reapportionment.

The NYT reports on Samuel Alito and the strong influence his father had on him. Telling the nominee's life story has become a crucial part of the confirmation process, and Alito has a special need to explain the opposition to the "one person, one vote" principle of legislative apportionment, which he stated in a 1985 job application. Here, the life story component is surprisingly rich:

When ... Democrats pressed Judge Alito about why he had once disagreed with the Warren Court decision that established the "one person, one vote" standard for state districts, he again recalled the legacy of his father, Samuel A. Alito, who worked for three decades as the director of research for the New Jersey Legislature.

In his bedroom at night as a boy, Judge Alito told senators, he could hear his father clicking away at a manual calculator as he struggled to redraw the state's legislative districts with equal populations, people present for the conversations said....

As director of research for the New Jersey Legislature, the elder Mr. Alito became known as a human encyclopedia of state demographics and legislative history....

Although he was a registered Republican, Mr. Alito was obsessive about avoiding any perception of partisanship in his office. Many of his colleagues said he never revealed any hint of his own inclinations on political issues, aside from the Legislature's importance to the state....

The elder Mr. Alito's highest-profile role came when the Supreme Court's "reapportionment" cases in the 1960's established the principle that state legislative voting districts must be of equal population: one person, one vote. The redrawing of New Jersey's districts started 20 years of legal and legislative battles full of risks for incumbent lawmakers. The issue was also rife with racial tensions between urban minorities and the mostly white suburbs, and as director of research, Mr. Alito was in charge of drafting the maps.

"He was walking a fine line," said Jack Lacy, a former Town Council member in Hamilton Township, N.J., who was a friend of the Alitos. "And he not only survived it, he enhanced his reputation."

We're so accustomed to the plain, abstract fairness of the "one person, one vote" standard that we may assume only a bigot would oppose it. But the story of the elder Alito struggling to fit the abstraction to the real world ought to make us want to moderate that assumption.

It's worth going back and reading or rereading the reasons Justice Frankfurter gave for opposing judicial reapportionment, back in 1962:

Apportionment, by its character, is a subject of extraordinary complexity, involving -- even after the fundamental theoretical issues concerning what is to be represented in a representative legislature have been fought out or compromised -- considerations of geography, demography, electoral convenience, economic and social cohesions or divergencies among particular local groups, communications, the practical effects of political institutions like the lobby and the city machine, ancient traditions and ties of settled usage, respect for proven incumbents of long experience and senior status, mathematical mechanics, censuses compiling relevant data, and a host of others. Legislative responses throughout the country to the reapportionment demands of the 1960 Census have glaringly confirmed that these are not factors that lend themselves to evaluations of a nature that are the staple of judicial determinations or for which judges are equipped to adjudicate by legal training or experience or native wit. And this is the more so true because, in every strand of this complicated, intricate web of values meet the contending forces of partisan politics. The practical significance of apportionment is that the next election results may differ because of it. Apportionment battles are overwhelmingly party or intra-party contests. It will add a virulent source of friction and tension in federal-state relations to embroil the federal judiciary in them.

"Any problems people have, money magnifies it so much, it's unbelievable."

The NYT has a long piece on that lottery winner we were talking about last week -- the man who built a replica of Mount Vernon and, soon enough, died there. His wife, you may remember, took her part of the money and built a geodesic dome and, soon enough, died there.

[Mack Metcalf] collected all-terrain vehicles, vintage American cars and an eccentric array of pets: horses, Rottweilers, tarantulas and a 15-foot boa constrictor.

He also continued to give away cash. Neighbors recall him buying goods at a convenience store with $100 bills, then giving the change to the next person in line. Ms. Metcalf said she discovered boxes filled with scraps of paper in his home recording money he had given away, debts he would never collect.

His drinking got worse, and he became increasingly afraid that people were plotting to kill him, installing surveillance cameras and listening devices around his house, Ms. Metcalf said. Then in early 2003, he spent a month in the hospital for treatment of cirrhosis and hepatitis. After being released from the hospital, he married for the third time, but died just months later, in December.

How much is a replica of Mount Vernon worth? It sold for half what it cost to build, $657,000. Maybe it should have sold for more, but the sad story behind it warded off buyers.

"Curb Your Enthusiasm" -- the season finale.

Well, what did you think? Cool appearances by Dustin Hoffman and Sasha Baron Cohen!

Audible Althouse, #24.

Here. Internet Addiction Disorder, the turn away from medicating one's sexual and emotional problems, encountering solitude, buying Christmas presents for yourself, fussing over your "food swings," what disco means to Camille Paglia, what John Lennon means to me, who belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and what to think of a high school that outs a gay student to her mother. 46 minutes.

Another ridiculous Committee for Justice ad for Alito.

Listen here.

Oh, no! Liberals are attacking Christmas! Please, Judge Alito! Save Christmas!

It does Alito a disservice to try to alarm people about liberal attacks on "religious expression," when the constitutional law in question is about government's expression of religion, something you can't tell from the ad. And the tinkly Christmas music playing in the background? What that says to me is that they think you have no brain, only a heart. Doesn't the pretty music make it grow three sizes and feel like carving up some nice roast liberal?

Amba gets a link from Pajamas Media.

Care to guess what that does to her Site Meter? Yeah, there it is, posing under the letters "osm.org." Amba checks out the Pajamas website for the first time and has the same reaction she had a while back when she took one look at a new store in her neighborhood, the one selling all the "choo-choo trains and monkeys and little boys and girls, all in that same bland, Scandinavian-Polish style."

Don't you love hand drawn animation?

I do. Have you seen the new music video drawn by Bill Plympton? (You can see it, in low resolution and after a few minutes of interview in a link found here.) I've loved Plympton ever since I saw "How to Kiss" in an animation festival maybe about 15 years ago. (You can watch "How to Kiss" here.)

ADDED: I don't know if I've ever mentioned it, but computer animation makes me ill. Years ago, I walked out on "Antz," and I've never gone back. I've seen parts of computer animation films on TV, and I can see that the technology has become fairly good, but there is something wrong with it, something crucial missing -- emotion, humanity... something.

Birds are evolved dinosaurs.

More evidence. With feathers.

Milestone approaching.

I'm about to hit 5 million page views, according to Site Meter. That's nice!

I hesitate to say this...

...because I think the wall between editorial content and advertising is important to a writer's credibility. But I love those little films, which you can get to by clicking on the Nokia ad in the sidebar. They're a little like those old Apple "Switch" ads.

"We need to stop blaming, suspecting and overly medicating our boys, as if we can change this guy into the learner we want."

"When we decide -- as we did with our daughters -- that there isn't anything inherently wrong with our sons, when we look closely at the system that boys learn in, we will discover these boys again, for all that they are."

From an article in the Washington Post, analyzing the gender gap in higher education. Via Gordon Smith.

Here's an old post of mine on the topic of the male/female imbalance. I find it interesting that Gordon says, "The biggest change over the past 15 years is that gender is no longer a diversity factor in admissions." I think he means that femaleness is no longer a plus factor. But I don't think he ought to be assuming that maleness hasn't become a plus factor.

How easy it is to defame someone in Wikipedia.

Who is accountable? Or should we just not worry?

Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford and an expert in the laws of cyberspace, said that contrary to popular belief, true defamation was easily pursued through the courts because almost everything on the Internet was traceable and subpoenas were not that hard to obtain. (For real anonymity, he advised, use a pay phone.)

"People will be defamed," he said. "But that's the way free speech is. Think about the gossip world. It spreads. There's no way to correct it, period. Wikipedia is not immune from that kind of maliciousness, but it is, relative to other features of life, more easily corrected."

Sales of impotence drugs have gone soft.

But why?

[M]any impotent men have chosen not to take the drugs, even though the drugs work about 70 percent of the time and have relatively few side effects....

While the drugs have helped millions, many impotent men have simply decided not to take medicine to improve their ability to have sex, said Dr. Abraham Morgentaler, associate clinical professor of urology at Harvard Medical School.

"The idea that every man with erectile dysfunction is going to want to take one of these pills - I think that's not accurate," Dr. Morgentaler said. "And I don't think there's anything wrong with that."...

Younger men who take the drugs are often disappointed because the medicines do not stimulate sexual desire, said Ian Kerner, a sex therapist in New York City. Instead, the drugs work in men who are already aroused but are physically unable to sustain an erection because they have poor blood flow to the penis.

"I think that they're being oversold," Mr. Kerner said. "I especially think they're being oversold to young people."

The article notes that the sale of antidepressants has also fallen. Has some widespread reaction to mainstream drug-pushing set in? Are human beings finding their way back to their natural bodies?

"Don't you want to be free and men? Don't you even understand what manhood and freedom are?"

"Taking a shower, washing your hair, drinking cold water, opening the window, watching television and even reading a book."

Things not to do after having a baby.

For my part, I refused to be a prisoner to tradition and blithely ignored these taboos. And Dong Ayi did not exactly complain when I took a shower or opened the window or drank iced water.

She would just fix me with a baleful glare... a silent warning of the error of my ways....

Food was another small battleground over which we skirmished.

The Chinese firmly believe that certain foods are beneficial after childbirth, particularly purple rice porridge with dates, pig trotter soup and black chicken broth.

On one memorable occasion, my in-laws even produced deep-fried pork-fat soup, which was surprisingly good.

The problem was that Dong Ayi firmly opposed my favourite foods: namely coffee, chocolate and bananas.

"Not for breastfeeding mothers," she said, banning them from my diet, "they're bad for Daniel's health."

I took the route of least resistance and meekly agreed, though I would visit friends' houses for clandestine coffee and secret bananas.

Even if the rules seem absurd, they do serve many purposes. Look at how these rules intricately connected the new mother to her traditional culture, enforced elaborate special care for the mother, and guaranteed an extended celebration of the arrival of the baby. Of course, the modern new mother can resist and make fun, but at the same time, she appreciates the beauty and function of the traditional ways.

"Don't take away our portable Rome..."

"...where we can all have our houses and our cars, and our lovers and our wives, and our office girls and parties and drink and drugs." That's how John Lennon described the attitude of the circle that surrounded the Beatles -- why they never told their tales or showed the photographs they had:

"If you couldn't get groupies, we had whores," he claimed. "Whatever was going.

"There were photos of me crawling round on my knees coming out of whorehouses in Amsterdam with people saying: 'Good morning, John.'"

The BBC airs the 1970 interview today.

"People don't understand what happens to you when you become a judge. When you take that oath, you are transformed."

The NYT has this news article on yesterday's meeting between Samuel Alito and Senator Arlen Spector:

The White House and Mr. Specter hastily arranged the visit after an uproar over Wednesday's release of a 1985 memorandum reflecting Judge Alito's passionate belief that Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court's landmark abortion decision, should be overturned....

"Well, Judge Alito characterizes it as a personal opinion," Mr. Specter said. "I don't. That's what Judge Alito says."...

[A] colleague of Judge Alito, Judge Edward R. Becker of the Third Circuit, who is also a close friend of Mr. Specter, said Friday that the memorandum did not reflect Judge Alito's approach on the bench, which he said was to look "at every case anew with an open mind."

"It is not the Sam Alito I know," Judge Becker said. "People don't understand what happens to you when you become a judge. When you take that oath, you are transformed. You are a different person. You have a solemn obligation to be totally impartial and fair."

Mr. Specter said that was the point Judge Alito made in their meeting.

He said the judge "raised a sharp distinction, as he put it, between his role as an advocate and his role as a judge," adding, "And with respect to his personal views on a woman's right to choose, he says that is not a matter to be considered in deliberation on a constitutional issue of a woman's right to choose, the judicial role is entirely different."

And the NYT has this editorial, expressing a lot of skepticism but stopping short of rejecting the nomination. Its bottom line is the same as Specter's: "The Senate needs to look through the cloud of explanations and excuses and examine where Judge Alito really stands on abortion rights." That is, we know with some assurance what he thinks of abortion. The question for a judge is what he thinks about rights.

Judge Becker says, "People don't understand what happens to you when you become a judge. When you take that oath, you are transformed." Well, people quite rightly don't "understand" that you become "transformed" into some inhuman machine that can generate purely legal reasoning. Efforts to convince us that you undergo a complete transformation fail because we are not dupes. We've trained ourselves not to believe assurances about the pure motives of those who would take power. But some transformation must take place, if we are talking about a human being who has enough moral character to be considered for the position in the first place. We also go wrong if we imagine that judging is nothing but repackaged politics.

Still, if we know a judge's attitudes will surely, if subtly, affect decisions, we've got to worry when the nominee has clearly expressed personal hostility to a right we care about. The fight to deprive women of the control over the insides of their own bodies has gone on too long already. Now, we are threatened with a new surge of legal attacks, as a newly configured Court revives the hopes of the opponents of abortion rights. I've supported the Alito nomination because I recognize the significance of the President's appointment power and because Alito is clearly an accomplished man of excellent character. But I do think he needs to demonstrate a commitment to the structure of constitutional rights that we have counted on for so many years.

UPDATE: Let me add a word about the fact that Alito has taken various positions as a legal advocate and not simply as a private individual. Aren't his ideas about abortion, expressed in legal writing, as an advocate, something that relate to abortion rights and not simply to abortion? An advocate has a goal in mind and, in pursuit of this goal, searches for legal arguments that might persuade a court. What an advocate does with legal texts and arguments is different from what a judge does. Advocates don't really think their arguments are the best answers, just that they are professionally arguable and would produce the desired results. If you asked the advocate to be honest and say what he would decide if he were the judge, assuming this advocate was honest and ethical, he would often admit that he would reject his own argument. Thus, Alito can properly distinguish the arguments he supported as an advocate with the goal of overturning abortion rights from the opinions he would reach as a judge.

"I wrote Lennon's obituary for this newspaper the day after he was shot, Dec. 8, 1980."

Paul McGrath writes a memorial to John Lennon, which he publishes 5 days before the 25th anniversary of Lennon's death:

By and large, he had found his peace. He had survived his vices, his politics, his rages and his therapies, avoided the junkie's death unlike so many, only to meet a cheap little handgun in the hands of a sad case like so many others he had met, kids who believed in some desperate part of them that this man could actually pull them out of the pit. And he couldn't. All he could do was write and sing, and in those songs tens of millions did in fact find a real solace, a pushing back of the fog and the dark.

I'm going to pick out a set of John Lennon songs to play it as I drive my car -- baby, you can drive my car -- in the next week. I'll reveal the song list later. If you care about John Lennon, tell me, what is your song list?

UPDATE: After collecting 35 songs from my various CDs, I selected these 17:

Happiness Is A Warm Gun
Come Together
Tomorrow Never Knows
Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!
Instant Karma!
Strawberry Fields Forever
Rain
Across the Universe
She Said She Said
Don´t Let Me Down
You've Got To Hide Your Love Away
Girl
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
In My Life
I'm So Tired
Revolution
A Day In The Life

I'm going to put the second group of 18 in my car too:

A Hard Day's Night
Please Please Me
Not A Second Time
You Can't Do That
All I've Got To Do
I Call Your Name
Sexy Sadie
Julia
If I Fell
I'm A Loser
Ticket to Ride
I'm Only Sleeping
I Feel Fine
Help!
Mind Games
I Am The Walrus
All You Need Is Love
You Know My Name (Look up the Number)

Some things about the sequencing I did on purpose. Others I find amusing now that I notice, like that I put the two songs with exclamation points together. These are all songs that appeal to me for one reason or another, and I didn't put them in the order that I favor them, though I did put my favorite one first.

UPDATE: Al Hurd remembers John and lines up 3 discs worth of songs.

"It became clear that, beyond new wars, what has kept the song alive is its melody, and its vehemence: that final 'I hope that you die.'"

Greil Marcus goes on about Bob Dylan's "Masters of War":

Dylan had stopped singing "Masters of War" by 1964. Songs like that were "lies that life is black and white," he sang that year. He brought it back into his repertoire in the 1980s; he was playing more than a hundred shows a year, and to fill the nights he brought back everything. It was a crowd-pleaser, the number one protest song. But nothing in the song hinted at what it would turn into on February 21, 1991, at the Grammy Awards telecast, where Dylan was to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award.

The show came square in the middle of the first Iraqi-American War—a break from round-the-clock footage of the bombing of Baghdad....

With that night, the song began its second life. In the fall of 2002, when George W. Bush made plain his intent to launch a second Iraq war—on November 11, just after the midterm elections that Bush had used the specter of war to win—Dylan appeared at Madison Square Garden and again offered "Masters of War" as an answer record to real life....

It became clear that, beyond new wars, what has kept the song alive is its melody, and its vehemence: that final "I hope that you die." It's the elegance of the melody and the extremism of the words that attract people—the way the song does go too far, to the limits of free speech. It's a scary line to sing; you need courage to do it. You can't come to the song as if it's a joke; you can't come away from it pretending you didn't mean what you've just said. That's what people want: a chance to go that far. Because "Masters of War" gives people permission to go that far, the song continues to make meaning, to find new bodies to inhabit, new voices to ride.

Read the whole thing, which includes descriptions of other singers doing the song, including those kids at Boulder High School.

I remember listening to "Masters of War" in the 1960s. It releases the young mind to think a new thought: All these people who run the world deserve to die. It emboldens you to sing along with this seemingly profound insight, and, singing along, you find yourself expressing utterly hard anger and hatred.

Without saying why it's time to read a tragicomic book...

John Simon picks five:

1. "In Search of Lost Time" by Marcel Proust (1913-22)....

2. "The Good Soldier" by Ford Madox Ford (1915)....

3. The Plays of Anton Chekhov (1896-1904)....

4. "The Journals of Malte Lourids Brigge" by Rainer Maria Rilke (1910)....

5. "Vile Bodies" by Evelyn Waugh (1930)...

Read them and weep. And laugh. I guess. These seem to be the choices of a very old man. I'll bet you younger folks can come up with some nice post-1930 tragicomic things to read.

Saddam on trial -- in a Western suit with a pocket square but no tie!

Robin Givhan wonders what that means:

The pocket square was a particularly distracting flourish. Paired with a tie, a pocket square tends to make a man look more formally attired. But without that accompaniment, it can look almost jaunty and rakish -- like Sinatra or Dino in Vegas.

Hussein's style choice throws the viewer off balance. Is his modest paean to the Flamingo a simple reflection of his hair-dyeing, gold-leaf-loving, frightful vanity? Or has he decided to beat the "occupiers" from within their own system? Take it over, or mock it?

And I thought it was shocking when I opened my office door one morning and found a man sleeping on my sofa.

But this... this... Oh, it's so horrible. And hilarious. (Via Dan Drezner.)

Defending Alito, Senator Specter conveniently forgets his own role in destroying the Miers nomination.

There's an amusing passage at the end of the NYT report on Senator Specter's statement today after meeting with Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. Specter opined that people ought to wait until the confirmation hearings to find out what Alito has to say about a memo on abortion he wrote as a lawyer in the Reagan administration.

Ms. Miers was "really sort of run out of town on a rail," Mr. Specter said. Senator Specter himself helped to weaken the nomination when he suggested that Ms. Miers needed "a crash course in constitutional law."

"Cameron offers audio commentary, and so does a much welcome and much sassier Kate Winslet. "

Come on, you know you want the new, improved DVD of "Titanic." DiCaprio does not contribute. Is he being snooty or does he know he's not good at commentary? Who cares? More audio time for the divine Miss Winslet.

"I for one do not dance to dance music; disco for me is a lofty metaphysical mode that induces contemplation."

Camille Paglia sniffs at Madonna's new "Confessions on a Dance Floor."

You decide if it's worth paying for a Salon subscription or watching a commercial to read the whole thing. If I'm watching a commercial and I think it's too long, it doesn't help my mood that the name of the product is Infiniti.

You know, I don't dance to dance music either. I've been at concerts where I'm just standing there like a statue and some stranger says to me "How can you not dance?" My answer: "I'm an intellectual!" Yeah, I'm in a metaphysical mode, man. You're intruding on my contemplation.

IN THE COMMENTS: Ron quotes Nietzsche, connecting dancing and intellectualism.

"'Sleeper Cell' is better than '24.'"

Alessandra Stanley gives us a strong heads-up about a new TV show (on Showtime):

"Sleeper Cell" is a spy thriller for the new phase in post-Sept. 11 television drama. Until now, most series about counterterrorism clung to cartoon ideations of can-do agents and fiendishly efficient terrorists - reflecting, perhaps, an almost childlike hunger for American indomitability at a time when news reports are less reassuring. Even Jack Bauer on Fox's "24" has a comic-book supercompetence to match that of his enemies, brilliant terrorist masterminds intent on bringing the United States to its knees. (If terrorists can be sloppy or lazy, then there really is no excuse for not catching them.)

In this series, the F.B.I. is a vast bureaucracy riddled with complacent midlevel agents who carelessly screw up surveillance work and bosses who are as concerned with diverting blame as they are with deterring attacks. Even the terrorist fanatics are killing machines with a human face. Some of them make foolish mistakes, from bragging about a secret operation on the telephone to a relative in the Middle East to panicking when they think they are being followed. Others secretly miss their wives and make weepy phone calls home in the middle of the night.

So the cartoonish characters and plots on network TV dramas about counterterrorism are attributable to the viewers' "childlike hunger for American indomitability"? What's the explanation for the cartoonish characters and plots on all the other network TV dramas?

Do schools violate the privacy of openly gay students when they inform the parents?

The NYT reports on what an ACLU lawyer called "the first court ruling we're aware of where a judge has recognized that a student has a right not to have her sexual orientation disclosed to her parents, even if she is out of the closet at school."

Christine Sun [the ACLLU lawyer who represents Charlene Nguon, said:] "It's really important, because, while Charlene's parents have been very supportive, coming out is a very serious decision that should not be taken away from anyone, and disclosure can cause a lot of harm to students who live in an unsupportive home."...

Conservatives criticized the judge's reasoning. "This court ruling is so unrealistic that it borders on ridiculous," said Carrie Gordon Earll, a spokeswoman for Focus on the Family, a socially conservative group based in Colorado. "In a disciplinary action by the school, you can't expect them to lie to the parents and not give details of what happened. It seems ironic to raise privacy as an issue in a public display of affection. She'd already outed herself."

Advocates for gay rights, however, welcomed the judge's decision to let the case proceed, but said it was too soon to celebrate.

"I wouldn't yet go out and tell a kid in Iowa to walk down the halls at school holding hands with his boyfriend," said Brian Chase, a lawyer with the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. "It isn't fair, but gay kids expressing affection are not treated the way straight kids are."

The lawsuit seeks to clear Ms. Nguon's record and create a districtwide policy and guidelines for the treatment of gay students.

Schools often tell parents things about their children that are news to the parents but no secret at all at the school. The news that one's child is gay is a unique item of information, however. For a gay person, telling a parent is a special moment in the relation between parent and child. The young person thinks about when to tell the each parent and how to put it. These are decisions that take into account everything that young person knows about the parents attitudes and moods. How it is done has intense short term and deep long term effects on the relationships a person has with each of his or her parents. For a school to preempt that profound interaction and dump the news on a parent to add some extra dimension to a discipline report betrays a contemptible lack of dedication to the interests of students.

This is not a legal opinion of mine. I don't know the law in this area enough to have a legal opinion. This is an ethical judgment.

IN THE COMMENTS: Several readers talk about their own experiences coming out to their parents. One reader finds the complaint in the lawsuit and discovers a blogging angle:

Paragraph 28: While Charlene was serving her one-week suspension in or about March 2005, Principal Wolf called her and her mother in for a meeting at the school. At the meeting, Principal Wolf threatened to expel Charlene for an offcampus “blog,” an online journal entry, wherein Charlene had criticized another student for being materialistic and criticized teachers for favoring that student. He also threatened that he could have Charlene arrested and her computer confiscated for the blog entry, but none of those things happened.

And there's a link to another version of the news story, one with better detail, revealing the problem to be not just the disclosure of information to the parents but also the discriminatory application of the school's rule against public displays of affection:

In his 13-page ruling issued Monday, [Judge] Selna wrote that the administrators failed to take "action to stop or remedy the alleged harassment and discrimination" and failed to enact an "adequate formal or informal policy to ensure that Santiago High is providing a learning environment free from discrimination" as required by the California Education Code.

While attorneys for the district argued that Nguon had no right to privacy regarding her sexual orientation because she had been openly demonstrative toward her girlfriend in public on the campus, Selna agreed with Nguon's attorneys that because an event is not wholly private, it does not mean that an individual has no interest in limiting disclosure or dissemination of the information.

"The court finds that (Nguon) has alleged a serious invasion of her privacy interest by Wolf when he disclosed her sexual orientation to her mother," Selna wrote.

"The court finds that plaintiffs have sufficiently alleged disparate treatment of (Nguon) on the basis of her sexual orientation," Selna wrote.

"Plaintiffs have alleged that (Nguon) was disciplined for expressive conduct that is not similarly punished when engaged in by heterosexual students," Selna wrote. "Hence the complaint alleges discriminatory treatment regarding a clearly established constitutional right, and Wolf is not entitled to qualified immunity."

"I actually, like, look down on people who, you know, get depressed."

"I don't relate to that kind of mentality. All I can do is just sit there and laugh. I think Felicia is definitely destined to... be done." That's Alla on tonight's "Apprentice." What a character, that Alla! She was the one that I bonded with in the first episode. She had the strongest persona. In the end, tonight, though, I wanted Felicia to defeat her. Did Trump make the right decision? Sure. Of course. The final episode has the right two competitors.

"The little beasts are agitated."

Squirrels!

EXTRA: Fiona de Londras spots the hilarious -- and grisly -- misplaced modifier in the BBC news story.

Sexomnia.

A defense to rape that worked in Canada.

[A]t a trial, sleep experts testified that [Jan] Luedecke suffered from sexomnia.

A judge then ruled Wednesday that the landscaper was essentially sleepwalking during sex and was not guilty of the rape....

Four other women testified the Luedecke had previously had "sleep sex" with them as well, according to the report.

We know the Oscar is phallic.

But could you tone it down a little bit?

ADDED: Via Oscar Watch.

"You're talking a lot. But you're not saying anything."

I like the way Martha Stewart shot down her most recent victim (on "The Apprentice") with nearly a verbatim recitation of that line from "Psycho Killer." She encanted a series of things "we know" at Martha Stewart: we know what is right and good and true and beautiful at Martha Stewart. She made an intriguing juxtaposition: "We need substance. That's what make my life interesting." Don't we all feel like saying that sometimes? But it would be pretty rude to say it in real life. Still, it's tempting! Who likes empty yammerers? And shouldn't other people be attending to the project of making my life interesting.

And then there's Jim. Dear, sweet, adorable Jim. Jim, who made me kind of love him last week, when he gave Marcela the pep talk that kept her from crumbling into a little pile of defeat. This week's show begins with Jim gloating about his brilliant strategy of telling the weakest player how to defend herself, so she'd be around and easily defeatable on the next task. Ah, Jim is evil. And Marcela is weak. She survived again this time, but we saw her barely able to hold herself together. Martha chided her for always slouching, and then Marcela couldn't motivate herself to straighten up even for just that moment.

"Internet addiction disorder."

There are therapists who diagnose and treat Internet addiction disorder.

[A] leading expert in the field is Dr. Maressa Hecht Orzack, the director of the Computer Addiction Study Center at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. She opened a clinic for Internet addicts at the hospital in 1996, when, she said, "everybody thought I was crazy."

Dr. Orzack said she got the idea after she discovered she had become addicted to computer solitaire, procrastinating and losing sleep and time with her family.

Well, playing computer solitaire obsessively really is a problem. But just strip it out of your computer and move on. You won't get the shakes or anything. If you're at the point of spending a lot of money or checking into an institution to cure your problem, step back and reason it through. You could simply get rid of your internet connection or your computer and eliminate the problem. The same applies to the "addiction" to watching television. You always have the option to remove the TVs from your house. Then you'll need to find something else to do. Don't plunge into indulgent notions of yourself as weak and diseased.

"I think using the Internet in certain ways can be quite absorbing, but I don't know that it's any different from an addiction to playing the violin and bowling," said Sara Kiesler, professor of computer science and human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University. "There is absolutely no evidence that spending time online, exchanging e-mail with family and friends, is the least bit harmful. We know that people who are depressed or anxious are likely to go online for escape and that doing so helps them."

It was Professor Kiesler who called Internet addiction a fad illness. In her view, she said, television addiction is worse. She added that she was completing a study of heavy Internet users, which showed the majority had sharply reduced their time on the computer over the course of a year, indicating that even problematic use was self-corrective.

She said calling it an addiction "demeans really serious illnesses, which are things like addiction to gambling, where you steal your family's money to pay for your gambling debts, drug addictions, cigarette addictions." She added, "These are physiological addictions."

Yeah, I agree with Kiesler. Or maybe you just think I just haven't gotten to the first step of admitting I have a problem. I think if you find yourself passionately absorbed in something, the question should be whether it is a good thing, not whether you are passionately absorbed.

"'I'm sorry, I was hungry' has become a culturally acceptable way to apologize for brusque behavior."

Oh, yeah? Or is this just another topic the NYT editors discovered by reading blogs and whipped into an article that could seem to be about a new topic and then just happen to have a hip blogging angle?

In an age of electronic navel gazing, when people blog about their every emotion, the hunger-mood connection has been able to be fully expressed and, one might say, feed on itself. Thousands have told their cranky hunger stories online, from a famished driver who admitted to cursing at other motorists, to a woman who wrote that her honeymoon might have been an affair to forget had she not packed snacks.

I mean, I can't complain if this is their methodology. My main methodology is to read the NYT and find things to talk about. And then I can weave in some bloggish critique of the dreaded MSM. But about this new social trend of adults excusing themselves for the babyish weakness of losing control when hungry:

A new vocabulary has evolved around victual despair, with the afflicted referring to their nasty moods as "food swings." Those who say their hunger frequently morphs into anger describe themselves as "hangry." And the word "hunger" itself seems to have taken on new meaning. No longer merely a physiological state, it is now also thought of as a mood.... Some people use their hunger as a verbal Get Out of Jail Free card. "Maybe I kind of enjoy the excuse to be cranky," said Fernanda Gilligan, a 28-year-old photo editor from Manhattan. Yet many mercurial eaters do not stop at words. They try to control hunger-provoked dramas by scheduling their lives around their next meal. They stock drawers, purses and briefcases as if they were kitchen cupboards to ensure that sustenance is always within reach. For some, a granola bar has become as essential as a cellphone. Anna Yarbrough, 26, a teacher in Boston, squirrels away nibble-friendly fare like string cheese, pretzels, apples and trail mix in her purse and desk drawer. If she and her husband have late dinner reservations, she snacks beforehand. A recent trip to a Celtics game required eating before tipoff and again when she got home. On her wedding day in October she was relieved to learn that there would be food at the hair salon.

Oh, lord, these people sound annoying. Do you have a cute slang term for getting cranky when people impose too much information about their private physical needs on you? (And do you have a cute slang term for getting cranky at the gratuitous mention of squirrels?) Finally, there's the male-female angle:

In general men do not seem to suffer hunger-related moods as frequently as women do, or at least they are not as likely to admit it.... But why would more women than men be afflicted? "Offhand I can't think of any good, sound biological reason," Dr. Saltzman said. He speculated that the people who say they have food swings are eating smaller meals and therefore need to eat more frequently or that "psychologically they may have a lower threshold" for hunger. Lisa Sasson, a clinical assistant professor in New York University's department of nutrition, food studies and public health, said weight consciousness might explain why more women report hunger-related moodiness..... Dr. Saltzman said food swings may be harder to conquer if they are based not on physical hunger but on "emotional hunger," which is triggered by stress, sadness, depression or even boredom. Emotional hunger is harder to satisfy, he said, because "you can eat and overeat and still not feel sated." [Blogger] Cherie Millns [writes] "My mother told my husband before we got married to make sure he always carried a banana with him, in case of a sudden cranky-pants emergency," Ms. Millns wrote. "It might just save his life."

"Cranky-pants"? Banana? I find that imagery distracting. But anyway, what's wrong with these people? It's one thing to get hungry and to deal with it by eating something, but it's quite another to make a conspicuous production out of it or, worse, to let it become a major issue in your love relationships. And to have your mother tell your husband how to care for you in the very way you'd care for a toddler? Is this really what's going on around America in 2005?

Reports on the Ayotte argument.

Here's the NPR story on Ayotte, the abortion case. There are two audio clips from the oral argument. The first is a compelling exchange between Justice Breyer and the lawyer for the state -- with a sharp cut in from Justice O'Connor. In the second, we hear Justice Roberts questioning the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project lawyer about why a preenforcement challenge should be permitted -- again, with assisted needling from Justice O'Connor.

Here's Linda Greenhouse's analysis of the argument:

Justices across the ideological spectrum appeared inclined to send the case back to the federal appeals court that had declared the law unenforceable in all respects, and to instruct that court to render a narrower ruling. Such a ruling would permit the law to take effect except when a doctor had certified that an immediate abortion - without either notifying a parent or seeking approval from a judge, an option known as a judicial bypass - was necessary to preserve a girl's health....

Attorney General Kelly A. Ayotte of New Hampshire, who brought the appeal of the lower court's ruling, asserted in her argument that under New Hampshire's general health law, a doctor performing an emergency abortion would have a legal defense in any event, based on the state's general law regarding medical practice. Ms. Ayotte said she was prepared to issue a formal opinion to that effect if the occasion arose.

The attorney general's position left Justice Ginsburg unsatisfied. "That's the real problem here for the doctor who's on the line," she said. "I think a lawyer who cares about his client would say 'defense' is not what we want, what we want is that there is no claim; not that you have to put up a defense and maybe the attorney general will give us a letter saying that we come under that defense."

Justice John Paul Stevens reminded Ms. Ayotte that the sponsors of the parental notice law in the New Hampshire Legislature had rejected including a medical exception. "When you have legislative history that suggests that the Legislature considered this very defense and rejected it in the statute, would then that give some concern?"

Ms. Ayotte replied that while "there certainly was some indication that the Legislature did not want a general health exception," sponsors did not intend to leave pregnant teenagers unprotected in emergencies.

I consider Stevens's question a devastating one, showing the bad faith of the state legislature, a deliberate hostility to the constitutional right the Supreme Court has recognized.

UPDATE: Listen to the whole oral argument here or download here. I'm surprised at how tempestuous the argument gets with the Solicitor General, who aggressively talks over a Justice more than once.