Extreme Tech explains why they think that Windows Vista will be a good product.

I’m not making this up. Check out this land. This is land owned by Keith Carabell. His case is before the U.S. Supreme Court right now.

A few days ago I talked to a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Today they ran the story. Here is my awesome quote:

Business groups often applaud, preferring one federal regulation instead of a patchwork of 50 laws. “What you want as a business doing business in multiple states is regulatory uniformity,” said Dan Simmons, a director at the American Legislative Exchange Council, a nonprofit that supports states rights but advocates uniform state rules.

Via Andrew Sullivan (“a gay man and a gay journalist” to quote Phil Hendrie) in Turkey they have bootleg copies of Brokeback Moutain. The crafty pirates apparently titled the movie “Faggot Cowboys.” I’m curious to know why they thought that Brokeback Mountain with that title would sell.

I know that it’s a long time away, but Talk Like A Pirate Day is September 19. Here’s Dave Barry’s article on the subject.

…and have been replaced by the F/A-18 Super Hornet.

A guy wrecked his $1 million dollar Ferrari Enzo on the PCH. Most amazingly, even though he wrecked going about 120 mph, the driver walked away.

Here’s a segment from Top Gear’s where they drive an Enzo.

From the Weekly Standard:

Earlier this month, Annan accepted from the ruler of Dubai an environmental prize of $500,000–a fat sum that represents the latest in a long series of glaring conflicts of interest. Call this one Cash-for-Kofi.

Annan received his award at a glittering February 6 ceremony in Dubai, as outlined in a press release from Annan’s office that noted the honor, but neglected to mention the half million bucks that came with it. Surrounded by presidents, businessmen, and nearly 130 environmental ministers, Annan collected this purse as winner of the biennial Zayed International Prize for the Environment, given out by the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum.

So entwined were Annan’s own U.N. colleagues in the process that selected him for this award that it’s tempting to relabel the entire affair as one of the U.N.’s biggest back-scratching contests. Chairing the jury panel, which voted unanimously for Annan, was the executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, Klaus Toepfer, and among the jurors was the U.N. undersecretary-general for Economic and Social Affairs, Jos

This story doesn’t surprise me in the least–Donald Rumsfeld and Michael Chertoff don’t use email. Why should this surprise us? We aren’t as naive, or out to score lame political points like Irwin Redlener. The story says:

But Dr. Irwin Redlener, a disaster-preparedness expert at Columbia University

David Ignatius writes in the Post:

There is a temptation that seeps into the souls of even the most righteous politicians and leads them to bend the rules, and eventually the truth, to suit the political needs of the moment. That arrogance of power is on display with the Bush administration.

The most vivid example is the long delay in informing the country that Vice President Cheney had accidentally shot a man last Saturday while hunting in Texas. For a White House that informs us about the smallest bumps and scrapes suffered by the president and vice president, the lag is inexplicable. But let us assume the obvious: It was an attempt to delay and perhaps suppress embarrassing news. We will never know whether the vice president’s office would have announced the incident at all if the host of the hunting party, Katharine Armstrong, hadn’t made her own decision Sunday morning to inform her local paper.

Nobody died at Armstrong Ranch, but this incident reminds me a bit of Sen. Edward Kennedy’s delay in informing Massachusetts authorities about his role in the fatal automobile accident at Chappaquiddick in 1969. That story, and dozens of others about the Kennedy family, illustrates how wealthy, powerful people can behave as if they are above the law. For my generation, the fall of Richard Nixon is the ultimate allegory about how power can corrupt and destroy. It begins not with venality but with a sense of God-given mission.

I don’t care that Dick Cheney screwed up an shot his hunting buddy. To me, that’s not news. I don’t care that Dick Cheney shoot someone any more than I care who Jessica Simpson’s husband is dating these days. It doesn’t matter. I understand that David Ignatius has to write something and I’m sure the newsroom in the Washington Post is atwitter with rumors. It is sad that these guys think they are doing real investigative reporting on this accident. Nice going guys!!!

What about Iran? What about riots over cartoons? What about the reports about Hurricane Katrina? What about the President’s budget? What about real investigative journalism of what’s going on in Iraq?

With real things going on in the world, I can’t get worked up over a supposed cover up about Dick Cheney shooting an attorney.