Here's an interesting tidbit from an article on Mattel toy company's disappointing earnings:

Worldwide gross sales for Barbie and Hot Wheels declined 11 percent each. Two brands did show increases. Sales of American Girl brands climbed 12 percent, while Fisher-Price products rose 1 percent.

American Girl? That sounds familiar. Remember my post a few months ago about the Save Girlhood Web site. The tagline for that site was: "The way we see it, girls are growing up too fast."

Well here's what the Save Girlhood site says now:

Thank you for your interest in Save Girlhood. Although this promotion has ended, the concept of saving girlhood remains at the heart of everything American Girl stands for. And to help you continue encouraging girls to follow their own “inner star,” check out American Girl’s array of ideas, books, and products that teach, challenge, and inspire.

So Save Girlhood was just a marketing ploy developed by Mattel ... the maker of Barbie. Certainly is ironic.

But, I suppose I should be happy. At least these American Girl dolls aren't so entranced with fashion and are interested in following their "inner star" and being creative. Certainly better than this altnernative.

I guess this is a triumph for the free market. After all, Barbie sales are down and American Girl sales are up.

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Look, you can buy the best episode of The Twilight Zone ever made for $1.99.

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As promised, I called Georgia Rep. Tom Price's Washington office (202-225-4501) and spoke to a staffer named Brendon. I told him I supported John Shadegg to replace Delay as Majority Leader. He said the Congressman hadn't yet made up his mind regarding the election.

I asked if he'd gotten a lot of calls -- not really. He said he received five calls last week -- two for Shadegg, two for Blunt and one for Boehner. Brendon said he thought the vote would be held on Thursday.

Apparently no one really cares about the new leadership. That's a shame.

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More bad news for wikipedia. I guess we must fundamentally endure wrong information cropping up in entries from time to time. It certainly is a good source for topics that aren't really controversial. Like this one.

Oh, and I just got sucked into this entry -- on the guy who shot Gandhi.

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So, I'm going to work tomorrow. I got a job doing writing and editing work for a new division within this company. I haven't gone to (full-time) work in about three years. It feels weird.

I'll let you know how it goes.

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A good travel tip.

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Instapundit is backing John Shadegg as the new House majority leader. Great decision -- he's clearly the reform candidate. I'm going to call (202-225-4501) my representative, Tom Price, and make sure he knows how I feel. I'm going to tell him who I want and ask how he'll vote. If he doesn't plan on voting for Shadegg I'll ask why not. Seems we should keep our elected officials accountable on this one.

Will keep you informed on my progress.

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Interesting article from the WSJ about religious groups affecting their portrayal in history textbooks.

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Even better roundup of Hamas victory from Tim Blair.

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Read these seven myths about the Challenger shuttle disaster. Pretty interesting stuff -- particularly No. 4.

A woman I worked with at the Nashua Telegraph was a grade-schooler in New Hampshire back in 1986. Christa McCauliffe was a New Hampshire teacher and apparently every kid in that state watched the shuttle launch that morning. She said it was a pretty disturbing scene in the classroom that day.

All I remember is wearing my Space Shuttle shirt to school the next day. Most thought it a pretty tasteless act.

I find myself wondering why I owned a Space Shuttle T-shirt.

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Good roundup from Instapundit on the strong showing from Hamas in the Palestinian elections. Perhaps a few members of Hamas will repute terrorism now that they've won at the ballot box. Stranger things have happened.

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When I go to the local YMCA to exercise, I find that I drive around to find the parking space closest to the front door. I think this says something about the duality of man.

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Talk about life imitating art:

A Drexel University engineering graduate student told police he was attacked Friday afternoon by four young men who beat him and tried to throw him in front of a moving car, authorities said. The 30-year-old victim was treated for a dislocated jaw.

The suspects, walking around after a scheduled half-day of school, videotaped themselves before the attack as they discussed how they were going to assault a random victim, then took turns holding the camera during the beating, said police Lt. John Walker.

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening.

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Atlanta is bemoaning the shutdown of the local Ford plant dedicated to the manufacture of the soon-to-be-defunct Taurus. Here's an interesting point from the NYT:

Foreign manufacturers, who now sell more than 4 of every 10 cars and trucks in the United States, have created tens of thousands of jobs at new factories from Ontario to Ohio, across the South and in Mexico.

Because of their growth, there has been no net loss in American automotive jobs over the last 10 years, according to James P. Womack, an author and specialist in manufacturing efficiency. Auto industry employment has held steady at about 1.1 million workers, including those at parts companies, he said.

Doesn't help if you work at the Hapeville plant outside Atlanta. But, it's important to see the big picture.

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Good Porkbuster's update from Instapundit.

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Very interesting post from Todd Zywicki at the Volokh Conspiracy. He examines Alan Dershowitz' claim that the Senate just really isn't up to the job of advising and consenting on Supreme Court judges. Some interesting points from Dershowitz and Zywicki, including this from the latter:

One also needs to keep in mind that the Seventeenth Amendment has dramatically reshaped the structure of the Senate in such a manner that I would argue it has made the Senate even less-equipped to effectively carry out the sort of inquiry that Professor Dershowitz advocates. The indirect election of Senators under the original constitution was designed to give Senators a degree of quality and independence from politics that is absent today.

Yeah, that's a big pet peeve of mine too. Before the 17th Amendment was passed in 1913, Senators were elected by each states' legislators. It really screws things up (and removes a natural protection from unfunded mandates) by having U.S. Senators directly elected by the people.

Can't imagine that amendment ever being repealed, though.

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Fascinating obituary from the Economist. Heinrich Harrer was an Austrian mountain climber who befriended the 11-year-old Dalai Lama in Tibet. The film "Seven Years in Tibet" was based on his experience there.

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Good overview of Red Sox moves over at Baseball Musings. Pinto concludes:

If this trade is real, it appears the Red Sox are following the White Sox model of improvement through defense and pitching at the cost of some offense.

With Ortiz, Ramirez and Nixon in the lineup, I'd say the offense is still adequate.

By the way, I'm trying to become an Atlanta Braves fan, but it's slow going.

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You gotta hand it to PETA, they know how to get attention.

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Article from the WSJ about the new ebook reader from Sony. This one will be the size of a paperback book. Odd that it took a redesign to achieve that goal.

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This is a great poem by Wallace Stevens. I think I finally understand what these lines mean:

Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

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The wikipedia definition of dingleberry. I just find this amusing.

(Hattip: Ann)

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Ebert gives Terrance Malick's "The New World" four stars. Interesting, because Wall Street Journal critic Joe Morgenstern gave it a decidedly negatively review.

I haven't seen "Badlands," Mallick's alleged masterpiece. But, I have seen "The Thin Red Line," a very crappy movie that received rave reviews. (Ominous voiceover -- "Look at the bird in its nest; he does not fight; why does mankind?")

I think Terrance Malick sucks, but people can't admit it lest they lose their intellectual street cred. Thanks, Joe.

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Here's a good read from blogger Michael Yon on the efforts of Operation Iraqi Children, a charity that distributes school supplies in Iraq. The photo at the top speaks volumes.

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Perhaps all is not lost in Red Sox nation. Wunderkid Theo Epstein has rejoined the team.

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Here's a fanstastic graphic from the Wall Street Journal for political junkies interested in Senate and gubernatorial races nationwide. Very user friendly. If you put your cursor over a state it'll give you a little more info and if you click on the state even more data is revealed.

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This wikipedia entry about an Eagle Scout who came very close to building a nuclear reactor in 1994 makes one doubt the veracity of wikipedia as a whole. However, the story appears to be true as several reputable sites verify its details. In short, this 17-year-old kid nearly built his own nuclear reactor using the radioactive material found in common household objects. An interesting read.

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Useful tips on surviving the inevitable robot uprising. This I must remember:

Your pathetic human hands are useless here. Choose a blunt or pointed instrument (serrated edges don't work against metal or durable plastic). Even a simple crowbar can save your life - you can run away while the robot condescendingly bends it into a pretzel shape.

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Dear Publix Supermarket:

Let me offer my congratulations on your newest Publix Premium ice cream flavor -- Red Velvet Cake. It is delicious.

I've always believed that Red Velvet Cake was our most underrated desert. The rich, chocolate flavor. The red food color. The cream cheese icing. These elements make for one astoundingly good cake. Why, I've often wondered, are all cakes not made with cream cheese icing?

One quibble, however. For some reason, you chose to add roasted pecans to the ice cream. Your reasoning escapes me. No roasted pecans adorn the cake, so why include them in the ice cream?

I think the product would improve with their removal.

Sincerely,

Matt Duffy

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This week's Economist obituary: Yao Wenyuan, one of the architects of China's Cultural Revolution. Another informative read.

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Here's a good Web site for Martin Luther King stuff -- including some great audio clips. Here's a one-minute clip from the speech delivered the day before he died. He knew the end was near, but he had no fear.

Here's the very end of the "I Have a Dream Speech." It'll give you chills.

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Good read on the random Chuck Norris fact generator Web site. Despite my membership in the StumbleUpon family, I'd never heard of this site. Here's my random Chuck Norris fact:

Bigfoot is a piece of Chuck Norris' beard that gained sentience and escaped.

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Wow. Who would've thought both the Colts and the Patriots would be out of the playoffs already.

Any given Sunday, they say.

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This cloud spooked me out earlier today.

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Thought-provoking column from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's editorial page editor, Cynthia Tucker, on the glorification of thug life:

Is this why the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. made the ultimate sacrifice? Is this why Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat? Did countless civil rights veterans put everything on the line so that, someday, a handful of black men and women could make a fortune encouraging young blacks to lawlessness?

The popularity of thug culture is among the most serious of modern-day threats to black America, far more dangerous than any lingering institutional racism. Its mores mimic prison culture: the ubiquitous droopy-pants look drew its inspiration from jail procedures, where men are stripped of their belts upon arrest. It romanticizes casual violence, helping to ensure that black fratricide will go on unabated.

Didn't know that. Read the whole column.

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Interesting article on NASA's successful Stardust mission that retrieved a piece of a comet and dropped it off in Utah. A pretty astonishing feat for an agency that takes its share of lumps.

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Just watched Star Wars III again. A really fantastic movie; too bad Lucas made those first two as well.

One oddity -- seems like every landing platform in the Star Wars universe sits about a mile in the sky and suffers from a distinct lack of any guard rails. OSHA would have a field day in that joint.

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Good comments from Sojourner regarding the final part of the "Country Boys" documentary. Yes, the last episode was the best -- perhaps because we could see how everyone turned out. I found it both uplifting and depressing.

Uplifting because the kid (Cody) whose parents committed suicide actually seemed to grow into a well-adjusted man. Depressing because the other kid (Chris) couldn't overcome his family -- a self-absorbed mother and alcoholic father. Depressing too because despite all the loving adults at the school they both attended, the independent variable in both their lives was their families. Cody had a supportive grandmother and other family members who loved him. Chris had absolutely no one in his family who cared about him.

It's no wonder they turned out the way they did.

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Saudi Arabia's Health Minister commenting on the stampede in Mecca that left 345 dead:

Al-Maneh said the stampede was caused by "unruly pilgrims, and a problem of luggage."

Sometimes I have luggage problems too. I recently affixed a Chuck E. Cheese sticker to my suitcase so that I could identify it more easily at baggage claim.

For the record, my luggage problem never led to the death of 345 people.

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Speaker of the House Denny Hastert sure does keep his blog up to date.

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Great article in The Economist about Google co-founder Larry Page and his plans for the company.

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Perhaps we should ramp up efforts to destroy the rainforests:

According to a study published today, living plants may emit almost a third of the methane entering the Earth's atmosphere.

The result has come as a shock to climate scientists.

(Hattip: Tim Blair)

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I'm engrossed David Sutherland's documentary "Country Boys" currently running on PBS. The three-part film concludes tonight. If you haven't watched any of it, don't ruin it by watching tonight. Sutherland's followed these Appalachian teenagers around for five years, and we're going to see how everyone turns out tonight. He's an astute artist -- hard to imagine that he realized following two teenagers around for five years would be an engrossing film. But it is.

You can watch the entire film on the PBS web site, which is pretty cool. Not sure if that's new, but I don't recall seeing that option before. I guess you could download the film to your laptop and watch it on an airplane. This Internet thing is pretty cool.

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From the Washington Post:

To avoid insulting native American heritage, the Seattle Times decided to limit severely the use of the term Redskins in the paper -- even if a team with that name will dominate news coverage this week. The Times will not use the moniker in headlines or captions. Reporters can use it only once, as a first reference, in all stories. The Redskins will be referred to almost exclusively as Washington -- which could get a little confusing for local readers who also live in that state.

No comment required.

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Interesting article on the latest research regarding the accelerating universe phenomenon:

Dark energy – the mysterious force that drives the acceleration of the universe – changes over time, controversial new calculations suggest. If true, the work rules out Einstein's notion of a "cosmological constant" and suggests dark energy, which now repels space, once drew it together.

Astronomers invoked the concept of dark energy to explain supernovae observations in the late 1990s that the universe is not only expanding but accelerating. The supernovae appeared dimmer – and therefore more distant – than expected, given their red shift, which measures how much their light has been stretched by the expansion of space.

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Here's more proof that Republicans have lost their way:

Sen. Cecil Staton (R-Macon) has heard the same complaint many times. He wants to prohibit cellphone providers from requiring that customers extend their contracts in order to change their plans.

"I'm a businessperson," said Staton, who filed a bill on behalf of frustrated cellphone users Tuesday. "I'm not a big fan of government regulations. But I know that when an industry is not willing to self-police, there is a role for government."

I have a two-year contract as well, but it doesn't bother me in the least. I know that it'll cost $175 to break the contract and if a good enough deal emerges from a competitor, I'll do just that.

Verizon knows this too. Since I first started my service with them 3 years ago, my monthly rates have dropped continuously. Of course, I have to keep an eye out for the new rates and call them to change my contract. But that's what careful consumers do in a free-market society.

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Here's Stanley Kaufman's review of Brokeback Mountain. Kaufman, staff critic for The New Republic, is one of our finest film reviewers, and he has nothing but praise for the Ang Lee film.

I'm a big fan of Lee's work ("The Hulk," "Crouching Tiger"), and I think that I will have to see this movie.

Here's Kaufman's take on the controversy surrounding its theme:

Brokeback Mountain does not contain the slightest suggestion that its purpose is to chronicle a case or a social problem. (It has provoked a blizzard of articles on the subject of cowboy homosexuality, most of them paying little attention to the film's art.) It simply treasures two human beings who, unlikely as we may have thought it for these men, find themselves fixed in a discomfiting yet thorough passion. They inhabit a world that vaunts macho masculinity; nonetheless they seem secretly fortified by their fate.

This last paragraph is great:

So in all the tumult about this film, the eruption of its subject into wide attention and the consequent revelations about cowboys' lives in the past, let us--without forgetting the American sources of the screenplay--acknowledge the anomaly that the director is Chinese. Where his mind and imagination will take Lee next I do not yet know, but I certainly want to follow.

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An aide from Senator Coburn's (R-Okla.) office has a lengthy post on Instapundit regarding the problem with Congressional pork:

The effect of this process is that high-paid lobbyists who get their project requests inserted at the last minute end up with more power than those who are actually elected to be caretakers of taxpayer dollars. John Fund wrote in the Wall Street Journal that Jack Abramoff “bragged that appropriations committees were ‘earmark favor factories.’” Relatives of elected officials even benefit from their proximity to power. The wife of Tom Daschle was an airline lobbyist while he was Senate Majority Leader, the sons of Minority Leader Harry Reid work as lobbyists in Nevada, and the son of Senator Ted Stevens (a senior member of the Senate appropriations committee) is the chairman of an Alaskan marketing organization that received $500,000 in federal appropriations to paint a salmon on a Boeing 737. The Los Angeles Times reported in June 2003 that “at least 17 senators and 11 members of the House have family members who lobby or work as consultants on government relations, most in Washington and often for clients who rely on the related lawmakers' goodwill.

Read the whole thing. It's quite infuriating.

For the record, my Republican senators voted against the Coburn amendment that would have stripped the highway bill of its most egregious pork. Where have you gone, fiscal discipline?

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Kudos to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for their coverage of voter fraud in Georgia. State legislators are debating a reform bill that would require a photo ID to vote. Most critics of such a reform law say its unfair to require people to have an ID to vote and that such restrictions hurt the poor and minorities.

To their credit, the AJC examined the voter rolls and this is what they found:

Georgia relies on an honor system that assumes voters live at the addresses they submit when they register. These addresses determine voters' precinct assignments and, consequently, the elections in which they may cast ballots.

The honor system failed in the Atlanta City Council's 6th District, the Journal-Constitution found.

Five votes separated the two candidates in November's election. But the newspaper identified seven voters who claim as their home addresses one of two UPS Stores on Monroe Drive, where each rents a mailbox. Another voter in the 6th District last November recorded his address as an apartment at 541 10th Street N.E. -- the location of the tennis courts at Grady High School.

This certainly frames the debate in a different manner. I don't see how you can argue that the current system -- in which anyone can vote anywhere with virtually no safeguardds against fraud -- is fair.

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Why are cartoon characters usually drawn with only four fingers on each hand? Finally, the answer.

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This is disturbing:

An estimated 800,000 adult New Yorkers - more than one in every eight - now have diabetes, and city health officials describe the problem as a bona fide epidemic.

When are we going to get serious about obesity? You can't smoke a cigarette within 1,000 yards of a public building, but you can sure buy a Twinkie inside it.

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I use BizRate.com if I buy stuff online. They compare prices and record customer reactions of online firms. Good way to find the cheapest price and whether the company is reputable. On that note, I don't think I'll ever do business with eCost.com. Check out these complaints.

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Talk about a letdown.

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Here are the weekend box office numbers. I can't believe the film Hostel is at the top of the list. I don't even want to watch the commercials, much less see the film. From what I can tell, the entire movie focuses on the systematic torture of some teenagers. That's entertainment!

I guess these types of movies are pretty popular. Saw topped $100 million. And look at this -- Saw II's made $87 million. That's a lot of money for a sequel about a guy who finds new and unusual ways to kill people.

One bright spot regarding the weekend box office numbers -- The Chronicles of Narnia has made $247 million so far. That's also a lot of money -- more proof that Hollywood could reap larger profits if they'd make movies that parents want to take their kids to see. Seems to me that there's a whole lot of wholesome kids' books just waiting to be made into movies.

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Earlier today, my wife gave me three textbooks to sell on half.com. Three hours later, this one had sold -- $40 without barely lifting a finger. Of course, I priced it about $10 less than everyone else, but I like to move my merchandise. The Internet is wonderful thing.

If you haven't purchased anything through half.com, you should. Usually somebody in the world is willing to sell you the exact book you want for about three bucks plus postal shipping.

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Another great obituary from the Economist. Had never heard of Kerry Packer, Australia's richest man. I wonder if he'd still top the list had Rupert Murdoch not renounced his citizenship...

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Sorry for the light blogging. I'm adding a screen porch to my back patio. The largest project I've ever undertaken. I'm putting on the roof today and will be shingling this weekend.

I only have time to say that I agree wholeheartedly with this post regarding gays in the military.

Oh, and this is a great Krauthammer column regarding Israel.

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I've always wanted to watch a high school marching band practice. From the viewpoint of a camera mounted on a snare drum, of course.

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Texas beat USC in the Rose Bowl, 41-38. It was the best college football game I've ever watched.

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Here's today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Reading the story this morning, I thought it interesting that neither the company nor the governor's office had confirmed the report. Then I opened the old laptop and read the true story. An unfortunate mistake. Always a good idea to attribute facts in a headline.

Here's more commentary ... and Instapundit chimes in with this: "If bloggers had made these kinds of mistakes, Big-Media folks would be pointing them out as evidence that the blogosphere can't be trusted. But where were all those editors, filters, and fact-checkers?"

Good question. Had the Bush administration insisted the coal miners were found alive, I'm sure the claim would have been greeted with far more skepticism.

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Great game between Penn State and Florida State last night. The best college bowl game of the season. Penn State won it, 26-23, with a field goal in the third overtime.

Too bad it started so late that no one saw the finish. Big games should always be on the weekend so they can start early enough that everyone can enjoy the end. Perhaps the reason the Superbowl is so big is because it starts while there's still daylight outside.

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Talk about irreconcilable differences:

PHARR — The wife of a state representative filed Monday to run against her husband in a South Texas race that both candidates said coincides with an impending divorce.

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This would be revolutionary:

Sources say Google has been in negotiations with Wal-Mart Stores Inc., among other retailers, to sell a Google PC. The machine would run an operating system created by Google, not Microsoft's Windows, which is one reason it would be so cheap — perhaps as little as a couple of hundred dollars.

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Very interesting post about women in our society. Here are some good bits:

You have got to be kidding me. In a world where everywhere you look - magazines, television, movies, billboards, newspapers, even adverts we get in our junk mail, how on earth could any woman fail to get the message? Women now have money, education, and some measure of power, yet the predominant images of us are not ones that reflect this 'new reality', whatever that may be, but an increasingly retrograde vision of femininity. One that is airbrushed, perfectly made up, surgically-enhanced, scantily-clad, and eternally hovering at an impossibly delectable nineteen years old. One that no woman with a job, a brain, or any adult responsibilities at all can possibly compete with. Not that this stops us from trying. Or from feeling inadequate when we fail...

... I wonder about this a lot. My daughter in law is extremely smart. So is my son, and she managed to snag him neatly. But the thing about her is this: she's a blonde and when you first meet her, her intelligence is not at all apparent. She has a rather kittenish manner. It's something I recognized about her almost immediately when I first met her: she conceals her intelligence in social situations. I recognized it because from the time I was in second grade I quickly learned to do the same thing if I wanted to get along with people. I put myself down. A lot.

Read the whole post.

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The New York Times' public editor is unhappy with his bosses:

For the first time since I became public editor, the executive editor and the publisher have declined to respond to my requests for information about news-related decision-making. My queries concerned the timing of the exclusive Dec. 16 article about President Bush's secret decision in the months after 9/11 to authorize the warrantless eavesdropping on Americans in the United States.

Read the whole article.

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by Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)
from "In Memoriam A.H.H."

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light :
The year is dying in the night ;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow ;
The year is going, let him go ;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more ;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife ;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times ;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite ;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease ;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold ;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand ;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

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