For whatever reason, it is all but impossible to find this on the Washington Post’s website, so here’s a link to the Washington Post 2004 Dining Guide.

Moviephone has the new teaser trailer for The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. I was very pleasantly surprised by the trailer. Check it out.

According to the L.A. Times:

If Congress truly wanted to reduce fossil fuel emissions and U.S. reliance on foreign oil

This post is from Reason’s Hit & Run:
A story in Sunday’s New York Times explains that when it comes to homeland security, the appearance of doing something costs billions of dollars. But even money poorly spent–on weapon detection equipment that doesn’t work, for example–is money well spent:

Even if the monitoring is less than ideal, officials say, it is still a deterrent.

“The nation is more secure in the deployment and use of these technologies versus having no technologies in place at all,” said Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.

Every piece of equipment provides some level of additional security, said Christopher Y. Milowic, a customs official whose office oversees screening at ports and borders. “It is not the ultimate capacity,” he said. “But it reduces risk.”

Yet Homeland Security’s inspector general says “the likelihood of detecting a hidden weapon or bomb has not significantly changed since the government took over airport screening operations in 2002.” Baggage screening equipment is so inacccurate, cumbersome, and inefficient that checked luggage often goes on planes unscreened. Radiation detectors at ports, intended to detect “dirty bombs,” yield so many false positives that they are nearly worthless.

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, explains that throwing money at the problem is a largely symbolic endeavor. “After 9/11, we had to show how committed we were by spending hugely greater amounts of money than ever before, as rapidly as possible,” he says. “That brought us what we might expect, which is some expensive mistakes.”

Someone has too much time on their hands to build a life size version of Han Solo in Carbonite–out of legos.

Michael Crichton argues that aliens cause global warming. It is a very good piece and he makes important points along the way about how science is frequently misused. He begins:

My topic today sounds humorous but unfortunately I am serious. I am going to argue that extraterrestrials lie behind global warming. Or to speak more precisely, I will argue that a belief in extraterrestrials has paved the way, in a progression of steps, to a belief in global warming. Charting this progression of belief will be my task today.

Let me say at once that I have no desire to discourage anyone from believing in either extraterrestrials or global warming. That would be quite impossible to do. Rather, I want to discuss the history of several widely-publicized beliefs and to point to what I consider an emerging crisis in the whole enterprise of science-namely the increasingly uneasy relationship between hard science and public policy.

I have a special interest in this because of my own upbringing. I was born in the midst of World War II, and passed my formative years at the height of the Cold War. In school drills, I dutifully crawled under my desk in preparation for a nuclear attack.

It was a time of widespread fear and uncertainty, but even as a child I believed that science represented the best and greatest hope for mankind. Even to a child, the contrast was clear between the world of politics-a world of hate and danger, of irrational beliefs and fears, of mass manipulation and disgraceful blots on human history. In contrast, science held different values-international in scope, forging friendships and working relationships across national boundaries and political systems, encouraging a dispassionate habit of thought, and ultimately leading to fresh knowledge and technology that would benefit all mankind. The world might not be avery good place, but science would make it better. And it did. In my lifetime, science has largely fulfilled its promise. Science has been the great intellectual adventure of our age, and a great hope for our troubled and restless world.

But I did not expect science merely to extend lifespan, feed the hungry, cure disease, and shrink the world with jets and cell phones. I also expected science to banish the evils of human thought—prejudice and superstition, irrational beliefs and false fears. I expected science to be, in Carl Sagan’s memorable phrase, “a candle in a demon haunted world.” And here, I am not so pleased with the impact of science. Rather than serving as a cleansing force, science has in some instances been seduced by the more ancient lures of politics and publicity. Some of the demons that haunt our world in recent years are invented by scientists. The world has not benefited from permitting these demons to escape free.

-More-

I used to hate Rickey Henderson. He was brash, egotistical, and self-centered. He may be all of those things still, but it is obvious that he absolutely loves to play baseball. According to ESPN.com:

The San Diego Surf Dawgs apparently have found their leadoff hitter: Rickey Henderson.

Henderson, a future Hall of Famer, has signed a contract to play for the Dawgs in the inaugural season of the Golden Baseball League, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports.

“He still just wants to play,” Surf Dawgs manager Terry Kennedy said. “I think he wants to be the first one to hit a home run, cross home plate and collect his salary check, pension and social security all at the same time.”

Henderson, 46, will earn $3,000 a month as a member of the Class-A level independent team’s roster. He is expected to play left field for the Surf Dawgs when the season opens on May 26 and has a lucrative marketing agreement with the league — including a Rickey Henderson bobblehead night.

The State of California helpfully provides the following information to help tattle tales. Who are these tattle tales and why do they care if someone evades taxes?

Board of Equalization Tax Evasion Hotline

The Tax Evasion Hotline was created to provide an outlet for concerned citizens who are aware of tax evasion, in any form, to report problems directly to the Board of Equalization. The toll-free number is now available, and representatives are available to take calls from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday (Pacific Time), excluding State holidays.

From Foxnews:

Brian Roberts first tried on his newfangled contact lenses about an hour before the Orioles’ last spring training game in Florida. He ripped three hits on a day his teammates groused about the difficulties of seeing the ball in the bright sun shining from a cloudless sky.

A longtime wearer of contacts, Roberts needed no persuading afterward to keep the new lenses, even if they make him look like some wild-eyed creature from a science fiction film. After a monster start

If you want to make money on the web, sell t-shirts.