Reel mowing a semi-circular lawn.

Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, tries to explain.

He objected to his own "complicity... on behalf of a government that openly acknowledges that it would hate for the law of Almighty Allah to be the supreme law of the land." He apologized to "the Mujahideen, the believers, and the innocent" and "ask[s] for their forgiveness for participating in the illegal and immoral aggression against Muslims, their religion and their lands." He wanted to be able to argue "defense of others" at trial, but the judge has denied that.

At a hearing earlier this month, Hasan, who is paralyzed from the abdomen down after being shot by police the day of the Fort Hood shooting, said he wanted jurors to know that he was being forced to wear a camouflage uniform that he believes represents 'an enemy of Islam.'

Is there some crazy notion about camouflage that he objects to or is this simply the main idea that he felt like a traitor to his religion by serving in the U.S. Army? When I first read this, I thought, is there some misreading of the camouflage pattern that is troubling some people? I looked around on line but found nothing, and I'm ready to assume that I was the one doing the misreading.

"Parkinson's itself there's nothing horrifying to me. It's not horrible."

"I don't think it's gothic nastiness. There's nothing on the surface horrible about someone with shaking hands," said Michael J. Fox, who will have a new sitcom in which he plays a dad who, of course, must have Parkinson's disease, since Fox has it. But the disease, we're told, won't be central to the plotlines.

"'The way I look at life and the reality of Parkinson's, sometimes it's frustrating and sometimes it's funny. I need to look at it that way and other people need to look at it that way."

Travel bloggers organizing travel bloggers to leverage travel blogging for travel.

It's not just the old problem of how to monetize your blog. It's the special travel blogger's problem of needing to pay for the raw material for your writing, and these people can barely talk about the problem of writing well (or usefully) about things they've been given free in anticipation of good publicity.

You have to get deeply into this NYT article to get to the really complicated commerce that made me write the post title above:

In order to make a go of it, some [travel bloggers have] contractual partnerships with outfitters like G Adventures, which created Wanderers in Residence in 2010. The program currently includes five bloggers, who lead tours, do speaking engagements and write blog posts for the company (the bloggers are compensated monthly)...

A different sort of outlet is IAmbassador, which [a travel blogger] started in 2011. The program...  organizes bloggers and pitches campaigns to tourism boards. There are now about 40 bloggers participating in the resulting sponsored trips, Mr. Jenkins said; he has also formed partnerships with travel blogging networks in Germany and Brazil.

I'm not a travel buff and I don't care about travel blogs or other travel writing, but I understand the appeal of real life activities with other bloggers and the desire to have good travel companions, and why shouldn't some bloggers make money organizing trips? It's just another form of packaged vacation, but part of the organizer's clout is some sort of offer of good press. Once the freebie is acquired, do the bloggers feel compelled to be nice? I'd be inclined to be the blogger who calls bullshit on the other bloggers on my tour who effused too much. Maybe I'd get banned (as a troll).

iPaw.

(From Irene.)

ADDED: I've added the "poodle" tag. Having blogged about breed-specific dog food today, I'm interested in my breed-specific tag. But only for poodles.

"Walter Cronkite hosted a special about Sinatra in 1965..."

"... and as part of that production, a CBS film crew was there for the recording of 'It Was A Very Good Year,'" writes an emailer who read yesterday's post about the Gordon Jenkin's record "Manhattan Tower."

Here's the video, in which you see a lot of Jenkins, conducting the orchestra, which is there in real time as Sinatra does the vocal:

Dachshund food.

I had no idea there was breed-specific dog food. But Dachshund food was one of the items bought through the Althouse Amazon portal yesterday. Whatever you need to buy — on whatever level of specificity — you can choose to enter Amazon through that link and thereby bark, howl, and yap your appreciation for this blog, where there's always another biscuit.

What if a black widow spider were to nest in a prisoner's dreadlocks?

That happened once. There might also be a fungus hidden in the hair-covered scalp. Weapons might be stowed in the hair, and guards searching for them by hand are afraid of getting cut by razor blades. Moreover, if a long-haired prisoner were to escape, he'd have a ready means of disguise: cut off that hair. These and other reasons were the "compelling interests" that worked for the government in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected a claim for a religious exemption to the no-long-hair policy in prison.

Did the Pope say "allow ourselves to be smitten" by the love of Jesus?

Last night's "Smitten by his love" post brought email from ddh:

Your suspicion that the Pope did not say "smitten" is correct. After an introductory paragraph in Portuguese, the Pope switched to his native Spanish and said, according to the Vatican:

Pero la Cruz invita también a dejarnos contagiar por este amor, nos enseña así a mirar siempre al otro con misericordia y amor, sobre todo a quien sufre, a quien tiene necesidad de ayuda, a quien espera una palabra, un gesto.

I translate this sentence as:

Nothing insectoid. It's not a theme day.

Purely canine:



That just happened.

When I was editing this, whenever Abby heard herself, she went into action as a guard dog, to protect us from the unseen threat, which was her in the movie. I had to put on headphones to finish.

Larvae Day.

After writing about larvae in my first 2 posts this morning, I go check out what's new at Instapundit, and the first post over there is about larvae — and not the same larvae. It's not as if some big larvae story hit the news overnight and everybody's got to talk about larvae.

If this were the first scene in a movie, this morning laughing about larvae would feel ominous, and within the next half hour, larvae would be threatening all of humanity.

The movie industry is "laying down too many big bets without anything else on the agenda."

Said Steven Gaydos, of Variety magazine. "They have to kick their dependency on $300m blockbusters. If they don't, they're going out of business." But it's not going to happen:

"Look at Comic-Con and then tell me if you think Hollywood is going to cut back on its comic-book dependency.... Look at how that event was covered by the critical establishment.... By and large, people are not looking for intelligent, edgy, mid-range movies. They're looking for superheroes and special effects. They're looking for amusement rides. They're like the kids in Pinocchio who still want to go to Pleasure Island. They're voting to be donkeys."

Coming up: Pirates of the Caribbean 5, Thor 2, Fantastic Four 3 and another Godzilla.

Looking at this from the distance — I am old, and I haven't gone to the movies in a year — I think: Good, I hope they fail. Why should I care if these studios collapse of their own rot? I try to summon up some empathy. In the last post, I was surprised by empathy for the soldier fly, bred inside a closed appliance for the purpose of food. (I refuse to consume non-free-range larvae.)

Who are the workers of Hollywood, that we should care? They seem quite awful. Maybe Hollywood should make more movies about the good people who work behind the scenes. A fantastic 4 of The Gaffer, The Grip, The Best Boy, and The Seamstress. We mainly see the snobbish bastards who — as movies have taught us — inspire our lust to gaze upon downfall.

A countertop kitchen appliance for growing your own insects, to be used as food.

University of Vienna grad designer Katarina Unger has invented Unger's Farm 432:

... a small-scale fly incubator... which "enables people to turn against the dysfunctional system of current meat production by growing their own protein source." In particular, Unger focused on black soldier fly larvae as her research showed that they are the most efficient insect converters of protein at 42 percent, plus a lot of calcium and amino acids.

The video is so good — with its cheer-inducing music — that instead of feeling disgust at the idea of eating the larvae, I felt empathy for the li'l guys, which is a whole other reason to stick to steak.

"Smitten by his love."

"The cross of Christ invites us also to allow ourselves to be smitten by his love, teaching us always to always look upon others with mercy and tenderness," said Pope Francis, in Brazil. I don't think he was speaking English. But... smitten.

It's just the past participle of "smite," which is a strange old word that we associate with God striking someone dead. We think of it used comically, affecting an old-time locution.

"I’m just asking you to wrap your mind around that, wrap your mind around: No prom for Trayvon."

"No high school graduation for Trayvon. No college for Trayvon. No grandkids coming from Trayvon, all because of a law, a law that has prevented the person who shot and killed my son to be held accountable and to pay for his awful crime."

That's terribly sad, but what law? George Zimmerman was acquitted because of the due process law that requires the state to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and I don't think Trayvon Martin's mother Sybrina Fulton means to attack that law. There's something sickening about seeing this poor woman wheeled about in her tragedy to mouth words of attack on the Stand Your Ground law that had nothing to do with Zimmerman's acquittal. Subjectively, perhaps Ms. Fulton gets satisfaction, but those who are using her should be identified, shamed, and denounced.

What happens when the under-the-desk spot is invaded by Pony Dog?