Al Gore jokes, then quips about the Supreme Court.

On "The Tonight Show":

Former Vice President Al Gore took a swipe at Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Wednesday, referencing the conservative jurist's recent skepticism in a global warming case and role in the 2000 presidential election.

"In the arguments, Justice Scalia said, 'I'm not a scientist, I don't want to deal with global warming.' I just wish he felt that way about presidential elections," Gore joked on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno."

Responding to the audience's cheer, he quipped: "I think 51 percent of the audience clapped for it."

The quip is sort of funny (though a good joke actually makes people laugh, not "cheer" or clap), but the joke is strained. (It doesn't fit together. Getting involved in the presidential election isn't something that you do because you think you have scientific expertise. But, in any case, Scalia's position in Bush v. Gore worked to extract judges from the election, as it pushed back the Florida Supreme Court, which thought it had the expertise to run things.)

"I used to be bi-curious, but now I've just gone all the way to becoming 'bi.'"

Says Glenn Reynolds. I approve! (And despite my long experience, I have no idea what to do about that problem. It never works that way for me.)

Hanging in there... for -- what is it? -- 30 years?

I believe I have discovered the last surviving "Hang in There, Baby!" poster.



Do you remember these things? They used to be all over the place in the 1970s. This one, you can tell by the faded colors, has been hanging in there all these years. I sort of remember what this poster meant when it was so popular, but it has by now acquired many layers of meaning. I can't tell whether it's richly ironic or sadly pathetic or whether it got back to being sweet again or whether it's gone on to being annoying the way it was in the 70s. Is it still up for no other reason than that it hasn't been taken down? It is behind a file cabinet (on what has long been an unused door between two offices). Or is the professor in the office trying to tell us something? And, if he is, what are the chances that it's "Hang in There, Baby!"?

Googling around, I found this old Ask Metafilter thread asking where to get the old poster, and that notes that "RetroCrush celebrates it." Do click on the RetroCrush link. You'll enjoy it. For one reason or another. I'm pretty sure.

(But it makes me think that the poster I've photographed here is an imposter. A second-rate follow on kitty cat, something like Jane Mansfield to Marilyn Monroe!)

People seem to be enjoying the new complexity to this Kramer character.

Sales soar on the new "Seinfeld" DVD. Still, no one could think it was a deliberate publicity stunt. No. No. Life's not that weird.

Survey.

Please take this survey about blogs. I did, and it's a research project that I think is worthy.

Who can sue to force the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases?

Here's the Linda Greenhouse account of yesterday's oral argument in the global warming case, Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency:

“You have to show the harm is imminent,” Justice Scalia instructed [General James R. Milkey, representing the various states, cities and environmental groups who sued], asking, “I mean, when is the cataclysm?”

Mr. Milkey replied, “It’s not so much a cataclysm as ongoing harm,” arguing that Massachusetts, New York, and other coastal states faced losing “sovereign territory” to rising sea levels. “So the harm is already occurring,” he said. “It is ongoing, and it will happen well into the future.”

Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito both suggested that because motor vehicles account for only about 6 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, even aggressive federal regulation would not be great enough to make a difference, another requirement of the standing doctrine.

When Mr. Milkey replied that over time, “even small reductions can be significant,” Chief Justice Roberts responded: “That assumes everything else is going to remain constant, though, right? It assumes there isn’t going to be a greater contribution of greenhouse gases from economic development in China and other places that’s going to displace whatever marginal benefit you get here.” At another point, the chief justice said the plaintiffs’ evidence “strikes me as sort of spitting out conjecture on conjecture.”

In other words, even if you think the injury is enough for standing, there are problems on the "causation" and "redressability" prongs on the standing doctrine. Don't be distracted by Scalia's wondering about the "cataclysm." You can assume for the sake of argument that the plaintiffs face injury and still find no standing, for the sole reason that the relief they are seeking isn't likely enough to change the situation. But, looking at the transcript, I see they did focus more strongly on the injury question. Back to Greenhouse:

On the other side, Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens and David H. Souter appeared strongly inclined to find that the plaintiffs had met the standing test.

They generally do apply standing doctrine less strictly... which means that Justice Kennedy is the swing voter.

[Kennedy's] relatively few comments were ambiguous. Early in the argument he challenged the assertion by Mr. Milkey, the states’ lawyer, that the case “turns on ordinary principles of statutory interpretation and administrative law” and that there was no need for the court “to pass judgment on the science of climate change.”

That was “reassuring,” Justice Kennedy said. But, he added, “Don’t we have to do that in order to decide the standing argument, because there’s no injury if there’s not global warming?”

"We're going to stay in Iraq to get the job done so long as the government wants us there."

Said President Bush today, responding to what he called "a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there's going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq."

Yeah, don't go believing those reports about a graceful exit. Cue the lampoonery.

The economic analysis of cosmetic medicine.

Here's a big article about how all sorts of doctors are moving into cosmetic medicine -- where the patient forks out the money up front -- and how the plastic surgeons, facial surgeons and dermatologists are miffed about them horning in on their lucrative specialty. Everybody wants to be the one who gets to spend her life giving a zillion little injections into tiny wrinkles.

Bob Dylan meets Ricky Gervais.

And Bob's the interviewer. Perfect.

"Webb... has become a pompous poseur and an abuser of the English language before actually becoming a senator."

Says George Will, who, deploying a triple-D alliteration to express his dismay, opines that "Washington has a way of quickly acculturating people, especially those who are most susceptible to derangement by the derivative dignity of office." He points to the wild, wacky Webb's encounter with the brusque, bullying Bush, who triggered Webb's ire by asking "How's your boy?"

In his novels and his political commentary, Webb has been a writer of genuine distinction, using language with care and precision. But just days after winning an election, he was turning out slapdash prose that would be rejected by a reasonably demanding high school teacher.

Webb, Will whispers, said that the rich are "literally living in a different country." The loathsome "literally" lapse!

I haven't read Webb's books, so I'm in no position to say whether they are written in such excellent style, and I don't know whether the language Webb wields in his new senatorial guise is all that different from his novelist's approach. But I suspect that what we're seeing is not a man who has instantly succumbed to Washington's ways but a man with a novelist's mentality in a new setting. One way to explain his awkward behavior with respect to the presidential receiving line is that he thought through that scene like a novelist. If you were writing a novel about a character like him going through a receiving line with a President like Bush, wouldn't that be exactly the sort of scene you'd want to think up?

Ordinarily, in all sorts of social and political situations, people try to figure out how other people usually act and to stick to the convention and proceed smoothly along. This is nice enough, but rather boring. In a novel, a conventional social situation tends to be a set up for our hero to do something that shakes things up. The ordinary characters are aghast. They condemn the bad behavior of the protaganist, and we readers, in our armchairs, know how right he is. Of course, a novelist who concocts scenes like that is himself utterly conventional.

I don't think Webb has quickly picked up the Washington style. I think he's got the novelist's style, and he's his own hero Senator in a novel about Washington. And, what immense fun this is going to be! It looks like a great read:

Democrat James Webb declined to stand in a presidential receiving line or to have his picture taken with the man he had often criticized on the stump this fall. But it wasn't long before Bush found him.

"How's your boy?" Bush asked, referring to Webb's son, a Marine serving in Iraq.

"I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.

"That's not what I asked you," Bush said. "How's your boy?"

"That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.

I can't put it down.

"Only the United States prints bills that are identical in size and color in all their denominations."

"More than 100 of the other issuers vary their bills in size according to denomination, and every other issuer includes at least some features that help the visually impaired."

It hurts the blind and violates the Rehabilitation Act, a federal judge says.

This is an interesting manifestation of the notion that what other countries do says something about what American law means. (Discussed back here.)

It's an uphill slog.

Here in Madison, Wisconsin, as the semester winds to a close: 

 

 It looks a little grim and foreboding from here: 

 

But it is kind of nicely warm here today. Did you notice the young woman in that first photo with bare legs and flip-flops?

The Bush-Webb encounter.

I wonder who reported this as verbatim dialogue (via Memeorandum):

“How’s your boy?” Bush asked, referring to Webb’s son, a Marine serving in Iraq.

“I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.

“That’s not what I asked you,” Bush said. “How’s your boy?”

“That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,” Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.

And then there's the part where Webb supposedly could barely control his impulse to punch Bush in the face. Sources say.

ADDED: There's a lot of talk in the comments. I just want to say that I don't believe that Bush responded to Webb quite like that. I don't believe Webb was quite like that either. He sounds mental. I want to know who told the anecdote, because the whole thing is phrased strangely. It compliments neither man.

"It's good to be on top."

The ad agency celebrates itself with an ad that everyone will see and talk about. You got a problem with that?

In a stab at paying tribute to all the winners of the coveted Lion awards at the 2006 Cannes International Advertising Festival -- considered the most prestigious of many annual advertising competitions -- Draft FCB placed a display ad in the November issue of Creativity magazine that is an astoundingly large and graphic image of two real lions in the act of having sex surrounded by a huge amount of white space....

At best the Draft FCB tribute ad -- with its overt visual and verbal sexual bent -- represents an inexplicable lapse in good taste. At worst, it's a downright vulgar and hugely inappropriate means of applauding winners of awards intended to honor the world's most creative advertising....

A Draft FCB spokesman admitted the ad was "a terrible mistake," and further claimed the work was "submitted without proper approval."

Isn't that what you always say about your viral ads?

Are you buying the Borat broke up Pam's marriage story?

I'm not. Too PR-y.

News flash: Sad people look sad.

Experts explain.

Catchphrases, caught and uncaught.

100 Greatest TV Quotes & Catchphrases -- via Throwing Things -- currently arranged in alphabetical order.... Well, so, have your fun: Put them in the right order. I'll just pick a few I like:

Here's Johnny! (Ed McMahon, The Tonight Show)
How sweet it is! (Jackie Gleason, The Jackie Gleason Show)
I want my MTV! (MTV)
I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV. (Vicks Formula 44)
Jane, you ignorant slut. (Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd, Saturday Night
Live)
The tribe has spoken. (Jeff Probst, Survivor)
Yabba dabba do! (Fred Flintstone, The Flintstones)
You rang? (Lurch, The Addams Family)

Hey, wait a minute! Just a darn minute. Where is "Dobie Gillis"? "You rang" gets a Lurch credit?

"So how about that Kramer?"

"The way he just says stuff."

(Via Throwing Things via Hypertext.)

"Sorry, haters, God is not finished with me yet."

So said Alcee Hastings, responding to the news that he will not chair the House Intelligence Committee.

Do you have "every right" to create a new word and "deploy" it as you see fit?

Neologisms are fine, says Stephen Bainbridge. I agree. I played the neologist -- -ist! -- early on in this post -- twice! -- when I said "intrablogospherical squabblage." Bainbridge reminds us that Thomas Jefferson wrote: "I am a friend to neology. It is the only way to give to a language copiousness and euphony." The problem is not the creation of a new word per se, it's what you do with with that word and what effect you have on other people.

MORE: Classical Values continues the allusions to Alice: "The Red Queen shook her head, `You may call it "nonsense" if you like,' she said, 'but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!'"