When will this blog move out of Blogger onto the independent website at althou.se?

You may be wondering. We're ready to go except for the project of uploading all the old posts and comments onto the new Althouse. (The blog will still be called Althouse. It's just the URL that's changing to althou.se — instead of althouse.blogspot.com.)

Here's what's taking some time. I'm not just starting on a new site and leaving the old posts and comments back here. It will all be over there (and the old stuff will remain here too).  The Althouse blog will remain a single, unified opus at the new site. You'll be able to search, click on tags, and browse the archive and get everything all the way back to January 14, 2004, the day this blog began.

At this point in the process of exporting the blog, the great people who are doing all the technical work for me have done nearly all the posts, but there are a whole lot more comments to go. They've exported 23,549 out of 23,599 post, but only 15,262 out of 989,369 comments. It's a big deal to move that much stuff, but moving it all is important to me. Not just the posts, but also the comments. We could go to the new blog much more quickly if I exported only the posts, and preserved the posts with the comments Blogger site, but I don't want that. There are tons of wonderful comments, and they're all coming with me to "Sweden." I'm not going without them. Which means we can't go live until next week.

Isn't it cool that there are nearly 1 million comments on this blog? I wonder what the best comment of all time. The most momentous one for me is: "Meade, this is HUGE! Meade....?" (Explained here.)

I think I will be able to identify the millionth comment, by the way, so keep commenting.

Justice Scalia knocks The University of Chicago Law School, those infamous "Law and" courses, and possibly (tacitly) Barack Obama.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports on Justice Scalia's address to The Federalist Society:

After Scalia left the [University of Chicago Law School], it hired now-Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and started offering classes like Obama's popular "Current issues in Racism and the Law."

Scalia never mentioned Obama or any other professor. But Scalia bemoaned the proliferation of exotic law classes in the country's law schools.

"I took nothing but bread-and-butter classes, not "Law and Poverty," or other made-up stuff,["] Scalia said to laughter. He said his advice to law students was: "Take serious classes. There's so much law to learn. Don't waste your time."

The question posed to Scalia was what he thought of the ideological change at the University of Chicago Law School since he was a teacher there.

"I regret it," Scalia said. "I don't think the University of Chicago is what it was in my time. I would not recommend it to students looking for a law school as I would have years ago. It has changed considerably and intentionally. It has lost the niche it once had as a rigorous and conservative law school."

He also informed the crowd that he doesn't know anything more than "Joe Six-pack" about "homosexual sodomy," which makes me think I should, with anticipation, add the "funny in the comments" tag to this post. Please don't disappoint me.

Women have more nightmares.

Supposedly, according to some study. I'm mainly posting this because I think it's a good setup for punchlines and other comedy. I'm putting my "funny in the comments" tag on this. Please don't disappoint me.

"Artist to feed convict to goldfish."

Because I think maybe there are some people here who'd like to talk about something other than Sarah Palin, I give you this, a story that has it all: art, fish, crime, death, weirdness, lameness, law.

Gene Hathorn, who has been on death row since 1985, has given his consent for artist Marco Evaristti, the bad boy of the Danish art scene, to use his body as an art installation.

"My aim is to first deep freeze Gene's body and then make fish food out of it. Visitors to my exhibition will be able to feed goldfish with it," Evaristti told the Art Newspaper.

Oh, bullshit. How is this different from scattering ashes on... wherever... a beach volleyball court in China?

The artist imagines that the work will somehow make an argument against capital punishment. I make my living trying to fathom legal arguments, and I don't see it at all. Now if Evaristti sat in a cage in a gallery subsisting on freeze-dried Hathorn until he approached death, I would understand the argument. I'm not saying I would buy it, but I would understand it.

IN THE COMMENTS: Cannibal jokes.

Why are art critics so mean to artists?

A sensitive reader of art criticism -- "close to tears after reading yet another disrespectful, humiliating passage in this week’s paper" -- wants to know: "Why do you print such hurtful stuff?"

Ah, easy for the critic to highlight the clueless sensitivitoid.

The real attack on the critic would come not from those who think he's too mean, but from those who are even meaner. Let's see those letters too.

IN THE COMMENTS: We go off-topic to discuss the recent "fake Titus" controversy, and I'm moved to add the "funny in the comments" tag.

Where is it?

Another photo puzzle.

IN THE COMMENTS: KLDavis wins.

Rude animation requested and produced.

I requested it here, and Chip Ahoy provided it here.

And here's his nicer Obama animation.

ADDED: And speaking of the creative commenters around here, I love the "airport bar" meme that developed in this thread — which has commenters talking about commenters.

Important pens. Important insects.

You can't bring a camera onto the golf course when you're a spectator at a PGA event, as I was last Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. So I brought a little sketchbook and pen, thinking I might be moved to record something of what I saw and heard, in the style of my old "Amsterdam Notebooks." But ever since the fountain india ink fatally clogged my favorite Mont Blanc pen, I haven't been able to recover the old sketchbook spirit. My passion died with that pen. Here's all that went into the book I carried this past weekend, this little dialogue between my sister and me:

There's a mosquito on that guy's shirt.

If he was cuter, you would help him.

Yeah.

***

Now, I'm mourning once again not only for the Mont Blanc pen that died of fountain india, but the Pelikan pen that I used in law school to take all my notes and write all my exams. I am utterly sure that I would not have done so well without it and that it therefore determined the whole course of my adult life. You can see the beloved Pelikan in my hand here.

And what of that mosquito? Had it landed on a more attractive man, everything would have been different.

There are many pens and many mosquitoes. Most are just another pen or just another insect. But some!

IN THE COMMENTS: Trooper York discovers the theme of the day, and it inspires hysterical laughter.

The "American Idol" finale: The Clash of the Davids.

Please keep me company!

ADDED: Someone other than Ryan Seacrest is saying "This is American Idol." I don't like that. I suppose it's someone famous, but I don't know who he is, and even if he's famous, he should not horn in on Ryan's territory. The Davids are introduced as if they were boxers, and DA is called "David 'Baby Face' Archuleta." Ah, here's Seacrest. That's better. Seacrest is calling them "Big David and Little David."

MORE: The ancient artifact Clive Davis made great choices. "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" for David Cook, and "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" for David Archuleta. I much preferred Cook, but the judges preferred Archuleta.

AND: Oh, no, they have to pick from the songs that people wrote for the show. I expect the songs to be utter crap. Cook does a song that is about "dreaming" and having "faith" in yourself — like every damned song that has ever been written for the show. Ryan tells him he was "singing your face off." Paula babbles. Simon sighs.

AND: David Archuleta is singing an idiotic song about "this moment" — an obvious attempt at recapturing the magic — feeble as it was — of the original "Moment Like This" that Kelly Clarkson sang in Season 1, so very long ago. It's funny that it has the line "Open your eyes and you'll see," when there's been such a big issue all season about Archuleta singing with his eyes closed. And now, here he is, singing it with his eyes closed. The judges are saying it's a bad song, but they take no responsibility for the horror of all these bad finale songs season after season.

AND: Finally, they can pick their own songs. David Cook is singing a song he's never done before, "The World I Know," by Collective Soul. Archuleta is doing "Imagine," which he's already done on the show — and which is also, obviously, a much more familiar song. Even before they start to sing, it seems determined: David Archuleta will win.

AND: Paula tells DC he's "standing in [his] truth." Simon tells him he made the wrong song choice. He should have sung "Billie Jean" or "Hello" — that is, one of the 2 best songs he's already done on the show. When he finished singing, Cook's eyes were all red. He cried. Does he perhaps not want to win? To use the boxing metaphors they are foisting on us: Is he taking a dive? It was my analysis this morning that it was not in Cook's interest to win. Winning would fit Archuleta's life so much better.

AND: Beautiful little David thrills us with "Imagine." Randy yells that DA is the best. Paula doesn't state that he's the best. But he's "stunning." Simon "You came out here tonight to win. And what we have witnessed is a knockout." So all is right in the world. Join hands. David Archuleta has won. And the world will be as one.

IN THE COMMENTS: I've corrected it now, but originally I typo'd the homophone "one" for "won" in the sentence, just above, "David Archuleta has won." Jokes are cracked.

Who knows what lies at the end of an Instapundit link?

Followed this one. Landed here. Interesting photo....

If only I could think of something to say about it....

Get some perspective.

On the sun and the moon. (Play the video!) (More here.)