Faked mortar attack on the Humanities Building.

These aren't offered as decent photographs, but just as a record of what seems to be a sort of art (or film) project worked out on the Humanities Building, here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.





At the area at the top, where there is a pedestrian walkway, there are fake sandbags piled up. Behind the "sandbags" is some sort of (fake) mortar firing device. In front of them, on the sloping wall, is a fake mortar sort of thing, given the appearance of penetrating into the building. There are various chalk markings on the wall to make it look as if there had been an attack. I have no idea what the point of this is. I just saw it and photographed it. As you make your interpretations, take into account that there have been various fool-the-eye chalk drawings on this building, which houses the art school.

IN THE COMMENTS: Is that a mortar or a rocket? Those who seem to know say rocket. I realize I don't know the difference. And I did try to figure it out before posting, so it just goes to show that you can't get all your answers from the internet. But I did find this book, a fun book for kids, which contains instructions for making a "tennis ball mortar," which involves PVC tubing and lighter fluid in a tennis ball. I love the instructions, which tells you to be very careful, be sure to have adult supervision, and know that there is absolutely no way you can sue the author or publisher.

One bland, sandy-haired Senator out, another bland, sandy-haired Senator in.

Bayh, Edwards... what's the difference?

''I just peed my pants, and I'm not even wearing any!''

EW hands out the best quote of this season award to Parvati, describes this week's strangely skeezy episode, and ranks this season of "Survivor," in the grand scheme of all "Survivors," as No. 5.

Here's the useful ranking of all the seasons for those of you who are, like me, catching up with old shows on DVD:

Borneo, Amazon, Pearl Islands, Palau, Cook Islands, Marquesas, Panama, Australian Outback, All-Stars, Guatemala, Vanuatu, Africa, Thailand.

Don't spoil old seasons in the comments, please.

The (really) big stuff.

The author of "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" dies.

How your mind looks on the web, part 2.

In a recent post, I asked: "What do you think is the single most important question about this blog?" Ricardo offered this answer:

At some deep visceral core level, blogging (like most other creative endeavors) is about "actualization" (as Mazlow might say). Writers write because they can't not write. Painters paint because they can't not paint. Photographers photograph because they can't not photograph. Bloggers blog because they can't not blog. This is what they have to do in order to see the world through the right prism. This is how they learn the lessons they are meant to learn, find the answers they are meant to find, complete their mission in life that they are meant to complete. So the most important question here is not some surface issue, but the deeper issue of "Is this blog actualizing Althouse in the way that her heart and soul are crying out to be actualized?"

That makes me think back to that old slogan about blogging "How your mind looks on the web." I wrote about that back here, just 10 days into the life of blogging. (I was really into being terse and enigmatic back then.) Why am I making a post out of Ricardo's comment? For one thing, it struck me to read the word "soul" right after doing the previous post with the quote from the conference.... But I need to dash off and relocate myself... so I'll finish this post in a few minutes. How my mind/soul/heart look on the web will have to be subordinated -- for the moment -- to where my body is situated on the face of the Earth. 

ADDED: I seem to have stumbled into a "conservative soul" theme that makes it seems as though I ought to read Andrew Sullivan's book. Too bad he annoyed me so much the other week! (The soul of Althouse is riddled with spite and pique! Is that liberal or conservative... or somehow ineffably centrist?)

MORE: Hey, whatever happened to I'll finish this post in a few minutes? Sorry, I had to relocate to my office to do office hours and students actually came to them. I wasn't expecting that! So, anyway, where was I going with this, before the nonvirtual world grabbed hold of me?

Let's see... Is this blog actualizing Althouse? Hmmm.... The opposite of "actualizing" might be virtualizing. This blog has definitely done something to me. I'm afraid it has completely restructured my brain!

Whether that's the real me or not... is just more material for another blog post.

Notes from the conference.

Just a page, with a quote I felt moved to jot down:

(Enlarge.)

"A young man, a newlywed, thought his role was to be responsible for all the decision-making for the couple."

"However, the couple had never discussed those issues, and his assumptions came as a surprise to her."

People keep getting married without finding out first what each other's ground rules are. But it's a touchy thing actually go through a checklist about all the things you might be forgetting to talk about. People don't want to hear the information that might knock them off the course they've got their heart set on. But maybe you really ought to clarify a few things in advance:

A commitment to fidelity, for example, is a crucial issue, but one that is rarely addressed, said Robert Scuka, the executive director of the National Institute of Relationship Enhancement in Bethesda, Md. “It’s important to make those implicit assumptions about fidelity explicit,” he said. “Once the commitment to faithfulness is made explicit, it becomes more difficult psychologically to engage rationalizations.”

Ah, you can imagine all those dreadful post-marriage conversations! Spouse #1: But we're married! That means you must be faithful to me! Spouse #2: So I'm supposed to go the rest of my life without ever having sex with another person? When did I ever agree to that? You crazy control freak!

IN THE COMMENTS: Internet Ronin starts things off -- as I anticipated someone would: "I thought the standard wedding vow to forsake all others was pretty explicit. Or maybe no one says that these days." Oh, I think they still say it. But here's my imagined post-wedding conversation for that:

Spouse #1: But you took a vow to forsake all others!

Spouse #2: When did I ever give you the slightest indication that I took vows seriously. Vows?! You continually amaze me with your repressive Puritanical mindset. Vows! It's like you're from the 18th century. Vow wow wow. I'm married to an insane control-freak dog. From the 18th century.

"I only had two beers" -- it's the "two-beer" defense to drunk driving.

Are you going to believe that or the breathalyzer? It's a serious question in Canada.

"I remember thinking to myself, 'What's the worst thing a gingerbread man can do?'"

Who hasn't wondered?

"The Secret Lives of Gingerbread Men" depicts a small gathering at a Nazi rally. Keith McGuckin set up the display in this northeastern Ohio city Thursday night, a day before the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah begins at sundown Friday....

"I remember thinking to myself, 'What's the worst thing a gingerbread man can do?'" he said. "They're just copying things that people have done. There are no hidden messages here."

IN THE COMMENTS: I'm not sure why, but we're talking about "The Addams Family."

Where I was when I was out of my milieu.

You know me, I'm usually here in my remote outpost in Madison, Wisconsin, and I'm glad to be back home again. As my previous post hints, I was severely out of my milieu in Chicago. I was participating in a Liberty Fund conference that involved six hour-and-a-half discussion sessions, all focused on readings by or about the writings of Frank S. Meyer, who wrote a book called "In Defense of Freedom," which is an attempt to fuse libertarianism and traditionalism. I might write more about what was in these readings, but let's just say it took the extreme position about limiting government as much as possible.

Sitting around a big table, with no audience, there were 16 of us, including Meyer's son, Eugene S. Meyer (the President of the Federalist Society), several journalists (two from Reason magazine and Jonah Goldberg from the National Review), and various academics all of whom seemed to feel well at home in the libertarian/conservative environment. Would you have imagined that your humble blogger felt cozy and comfortable there? Oh, no, no, no, no. Virtually every word out of my mouth was an observation about something no one was talking about and that would -- back in Madison, Wisconsin -- have been said at the earliest possible moment. So there I was, the resident liberal.

I am struck -- you may think it is absurd for me to be suddenly struck by this -- but I am struck by how deeply and seriously libertarians and conservatives believe in their ideas. I'm used to the way lefties and liberals take themselves seriously and how deeply they believe. Me, I find true believers strange and -- if they have power -- frightening. And my first reaction is to doubt that they really do truly believe.

One of the reasons 9/11 had such a big impact on me is that it was such a profound demonstration of the fact that these people are serious. They really believe.

I need to be more vigilant.

Finally, an answer to the single most important question about this blog!

What do you think is the single most important question about this blog? I think it's: If Althouse is a moderate -- as she claims -- then why is she almost almost always picking on liberals and almost never on conservatives? If there's some other question -- not that I necessarily have the answer to it -- let me know. But the point of this post is to answer what I think is the single most important question about this blog: If Althouse is a liberal -- as she claims -- then why is she almost always picking on liberals and almost never on conservatives?

My standard -- inadequate -- response to this question has been something like: My way of blogging is to write about whatever gets my attention, and these are just the things that happened to strike me.

But I now know the answer to the question (and knowing the answer is likely to change what I notice in the future and what I will write about). The key thing about me is that I am -- usually -- writing from my remote outpost in Madison, Wisconsin. My milieu is thoroughly liberal and even leftist and has been for more than two decades. Things in the news catch my attention because they resonate with my observations in my real world life. I know the way people talk about things around here. I have a sense of how liberal and lefty folks react to things, and I am used to reacting to them. I take them seriously. They are quite real to me. They irritate, amuse, and confound me on a daily basis. I feel the urge to push back.

Conservatives? I don't know them. I know a few, but they are very amiable, moderate souls who -- maybe because they are the ones who choose to live in Madison -- don't say things that resonate with the news stories I read and, consequently, I don't have as vivid a response to the thing I read about conservatives. I don't take them so seriously. They do not irritate, amuse, and confound me in that immediate and real way that would make me feel the urge to push back.

To say to me, why do you write about liberals is like saying why do you write about Americans.

So, you may wonder: Why do I have this insight now? I'll have to answer that later. I've got a writing project that I simply must finish, but those who have been reading the blog the last couple of days have the material to discern the answer.

"I wonder if historians will see the era that started in the mid-'90s as The Long Freakout."

So says Peggy Noonan at the end of her meditation on what Barack Obama is all about.

First the Clinton era left more than half the country appalled--deeply appalled, and ashamed--by its series of political, financial and personal scandals. I doubt the Democratic Party will ever fully understand the damage done in those days. In reaction the Republican Party lurched in its presidential decision toward a relatively untested (five years in the governor's office, before that very little) man whom party professionals chose, essentially, because "He can win" and the base endorsed because he seemed the opposite of Bill Clinton. The 2000 election was a national trauma, and I'm not sure Republicans fully understand what it did to half the Democrats in the country to think the election was stolen, or finagled, or arranged by unseen powers. Then 9/11. Now we have had six years of high drama and deep division, and again a new savior seems to beckon, one who is so clearly Not Bush.

We'll see what Sen. Obama has, what he is, what he becomes. But right now he seems part of a pattern of lurches and swerves--the man from nowhere, of whom little is known, who will bring us out of the mess. His sudden rise and wild popularity seem more symptom than solution. And I wonder if historians will call this chapter in their future histories of the modern era not "A Decision Is Made" but "The Freakout Continues."

Somehow I doubt that historians will adopt Noonan's name for the era or even the notion that the Clinton Era and the Bush Era are the same era.

Meanwhile, speaking of Obama, I am putting you on notice about Eargate. And the main thing I'd like to say about Eargate is: somebody doesn't have a very good ear for humor on this one. Too bad they don't have a cochlear implant for that.

"Even though Mr Dylan's name is not used, the portrayal remains both defamatory and a violation of Mr Dylan's right of publicity."

Bob Dylan is suing to block the release of a movie -- "Factory Girl" -- that depicts the life and suicide of Edie Sedgwick:

The Californian heiress was the troubled muse of artist Andy Warhol, whom she met in 1965, and starred in many of his films.

The character that Dylan has issues with is called Danny Quinn and the part is reportedly a mix of him, Jim Morrison and Mick Jagger.

"You appear to be labouring under the misunderstanding that merely changing the name of a character or making him a purported fictional composite will immunise you from suit," Orin Snyder, Dylan's lawyer, wrote to the filmmaker.

The lawsuit is in Britain, so I have no opinion about the legal merit of the claim, but I certainly find it rather absurd that a public figure like Bob Dylan even cares that a fictional composite character is based in part on him. And if he's really so sensitive about how he's portrayed, why isn't he sensitive about portraying himself so damned sensitive that he'd sue to block the release of a film. It's not even a Borat film.

Oh, and...

I know we adopt a casual, conversational tone in the blogosphere, but can we please stop beginning sentences with the words "Oh, and"? It's like some kind of disease lately. Stop, already!

Chicago sunrise, sunset.

"There isn't a thing that's changed."

Said Harry Reid, asked about the Tim Johnson.

Reid refused to comment on Johnson's medical condition, declining to even answer a question on whether the senator was conscious. "To me he looked very good," Reid said....

"The senator is recovering without complication," said Adm. John Eisold, the Capitol physician. "It is premature to determine whether further surgery will be required or to assess any long-term prognosis."...

A brain specialist not involved with Johnson's care said there's no way to know until Johnson is awake and able to answer questions how much lingering damage, if any, the bleeding may have caused. Still, while he'll remain in intensive care for a while, "he has every chance of recovery," said Dr. William Bank, who treats AVM and other neurovascular disorders at Washington Hospital Center.

All decent people wish Johnson the best of recoveries.