Great essay from Michael Yon on a newly minted U.S. citizen back from Iraq. The wounded vet opened up a bakery in Tocoma, Washington. Its specialty is red velvet cake, the best cake in the world.

Read the essay and check out the photos. I'll have to stop by the Corina Bakery one day and say thanks.

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I'm back from New Orleans. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my battery charger for my camera, so I don't have any photos. So here's my oral report.

The French Quarter appears largely the same. Although it was a tad dirtier than normal. I think they're having trouble with the trash pickup. Many of the restaurants, bars and shops were open, but many were still shuttered. (I'd say maybe 70 percent were open.) At the shops that were open, the level of service was noticeably poor. There didn't seem to be enough staffers to go around.

We had a nice talk with the driver of our horse and carriage. Willie told us that he was a New Orleans native who stayed through the flood. He said he got his FEMA trailer very quickly with no trouble at all. Willie's living in the trailer that's parked in his frontyard while he does the repairs on his house.

He said the staffing problem is emblematic of the largest problem facing New Orleans. There's nowhere for service employees to live. Most of the low-income housing is gone. On top of that, the service jobs don't pay well enough. "Who wants to make $8 an hour, when you can pick up a hammer and get $20 an hour," he asked.

All the tourists were incredibly understanding. I'd say it's a good time to be a waiter in New Orleans. We felt so bad for these overworked staffers that we'd tip them 30 percent and thank them for being there.

All in all, it's still a great city.

My family and I sat out Saturday afternoon and watched giant cargo ships pass by on the Mississippi while listening to a steamboat organ. On Sunday, we took a carriage tour of the French Quarter pulled by a horse named Stella. And on Monday morning we sat and listened to the Beatles on an electric acoustic guitar while eating beignets and drinking coffee at the Cafe du Monde.

New Orleans will always be New Orleans.

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I'm going to New Orleans this weekend for a wedding. I'll bring back pictures.

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Welcome news:

A plan to launch a line of dolls based on US girl group The Pussycat Dolls has been shelved after toy manufacturer Hasbro Inc declared it "inappropriate."

An activist group (which I'll be joining) called Dads & Daughters organized a letter-writing campaign to scrap the dolls.

The leaders of the organization said:

We asked Hasbro executives to imagine encouraging their own six-year-old daughters and grand-daughters to engage in developmentally unhealthy behaviour ... It appears they did that, and then made the right decision for their families, our families, and the company.

Well done. Now, if they could just do something about Bratz.

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I just read the history of Amsterdam in wikipedia. Pretty interesting stuff, particularly the bit about the dam on the river Amstel.

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The ACLU would like to prohibit members of its board from criticizing decisions of its employees:

Given the organization's longtime commitment to defending free speech, some former board members were shocked by the proposals.

Nat Hentoff, a writer and former A.C.L.U. board member, was incredulous. "You sure that didn't come out of Dick Cheney's office?" he asked.

"For the national board to consider promulgating a gag order on its members — I can't think of anything more contrary to the reason the A.C.L.U. exists," Mr. Hentoff added.

They certainly do have a flair for the ironic.

Instapundit notes accurately:

I don't agree with those who demonize the ACLU, but I'm disappointed in how it has declined over the past decade or two. The ACLU has been corrupted by its dependence on a comparatively small fundraising base, something that's common with nonprofits. The organization also seems to have been captured by the paid staff, which feels entitled to run things without the Board's actual input That's another common problem in the nonprofit world. But this is making clear just how far things have gone at the ACLU, at the expense of its ostensible mission.

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If Microsoft redesigned the iPod:

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Laughter is the best medicine.

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I couldn't agree more with this:

Instead of educating future journalists on the nuts and bolts of journalism -- because let's be honest, it isn't rocket science or even carpentry -- it would make more sense simply to teach them things. Facts, it turns out, are useful. Most people can write a nut graf after 30 minutes of practice, but comparatively few people can explain, say, econometrics, or fluid dynamics, or the history of the French Revolution. Aspiring journalists don't need tradecraft -- they need a liberal-arts education that gives them a base of mastery in actual academic subjects.

-- Jonathan V. Last, online editor of the Weekly Standard.
(From the WSJ, May 19, 2006)

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Another dispatch from Michael Yon sends a fresh warning on Afghanistan:

Despite that there are firefights – big ones – occurring frequently, the soldiers are calling Afghanistan the Forgotten War. I am calling it The About to Bite us War because like a shark this beast has many rows of teeth.

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According to wikipedia, whey is the "liquid remaining after milk has been curdled and strained" and a curd "is a dairy product obtained by curdling (coagulating) milk."

So curds and whey are cottage cheese. Right?

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This company wants to provide free, advertising supported broadband wireless service:

The M2Z network would provide 384K bps (bits per second) of data downstream and 128K bps upstream for free, supported by advertising, and offer higher speeds to paying subscribers, according to the filing. Within 10 years of the start of service, the network could be built out to reach 95 percent of the country's population, it said. Customer devices for accessing the network would cost no more than US$250 in the beginning, and prices would go down over time through economies of scale, M2Z predicts.

The company, started by former FCC wireless chief John Muleta and @Home Networks founder Milo Medin, aims to help meet the agency's goal of giving all Americans affordable access to broadband with no cost to taxpayers. In its filing, M2Z compares itself to early radio and TV broadcasters that were granted spectrum by the FCC to provide free over-the-air broadcasting. In order to offer a family-oriented service, M2Z would build in filters to protect children from pornographic or other indecent content on the free service. In addition, public safety agencies would get an interoperable secondary data network.

Seems like a great idea.

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Soon we'll learn if Elvis fans and patrons of Cirque de Soleil are mutually exclusive:

CKX Inc., which owns rights to Elvis Presley's name, likeness and music publishing, has teamed up with the famed troupe of acrobats and contortionists to produce Presley-themed shows around the world, the company said on Thursday.

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Roger Ebert gives "The Da Vinci Code" a thumbs up:

Luckily, Ron Howard is a better filmmaker than Dan Brown is a novelist; he follows Brown's formula (exotic location, startling revelation, desperate chase scene, repeat as needed) and elevates it into a superior entertainment, with Tom Hanks as a theo-intellectual Indiana Jones.

So, apparently everyone doesn't think it sucks.

By the way, I haven't read the book. I'm a little behind on my reading. In fact, I just got around to buying "The Celestine Prophecy."

And what's this "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" I'm hearing about?

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Here's the trailer for Oliver Stone's new movie, "World Trade Center."

Looks pretty apolitical -- and moving. For whatever reason, this trailer appeals to me more than "United 93." I still haven't seen that film, and I'm not alone. It's made just $26 million.

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Check out this slide show of the new Rolls Royce. I'm considering selling my house and moving into one. But, I'd still be about $140,000 short.

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Yes, blogging has been light of late. I'm really busy at work where I'm doing a tremendous amount of writing. Finding it hard hard to leave work, come home and write some more...

Here's the Web site we just launched. You can't read any of the articles I write unless you pay us a lot of money. But you can read the headlines on the front page, so that should offer some excitement. Oh, and click here if you want to here my first podcast.

Here's a good post from my boss on taking your potty-training kid to the mall.

And, here's the wikipedia entry on the new Nintendo game console, which I am now officially predicting will be much bigger than the Playstation 3. The Wii (pronounced "We") will be far cheaper (like $200) and sports a much more innovative controller. Both consoles debut this fall.

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A pretty harsh report on Ward Churchill, the man who singlehandedly epitomizes the angry left's foothold on academia in this country:

The committee's 125-page report said Churchill falsified, fabricated and plagiarized some of his research, did not always comply with standards for listing other authors' names and failed to follow accepted practice for reporting results.

Despite this evidence, only 1 of the 5 academicians that drafted the report called for his firing. The other 4 recommended a suspension.

Plagiarism is a serious offense -- unless it's committed by a professor.

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OK, this is hilarious.

The BBC interviewed a London cabbie who they thought was an expert on the digital music business:

The man, who had been waiting for his fare in the reception of Television Centre, found himself being ushered into a studio and fitted with a microphone after raising his hand when a producer called out the name Guy Kewney.

The video is great. After the initial surprise, he decides to just play along.

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No, Louis Ruykeyser didn't make The Economist obituary. However, this profile of Jane Jacobs proves more than interesting.

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Good roundup of the phone record story at Instapundit. He notes that an ABC poll shows Americans overwhelmingly support "the surveillance of telephone records an acceptable way for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats."

I gotta say I'm in that camp. And I used to be a kneejerk critic of the smallest amount of government encroachment.

I'm not turning into Thomas Hobbes, but Sept. 11 certainly changed my outlook somewhat.

Come to think of it, I was much more concerned with civil liberties back when Clinton was president. Perhaps that explains where everyone stands on these civil liberties debates.

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I've always wondered why Miracle Whip is called salad dressing on the label. I mean, you never put it on salads. It should be called sandwich spread or something, right?

Anyhoo, I Googled it, and that didn't help either. Nothing on wikipedia entry either. I'm a little disappointed in the Internet tonight.

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Here's the editorial page editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Cynthia Tucker, on the latest rap murder:

The deaths have received at least cursory news coverage, a tribute to the celebrity status of most of the subjects. But there have been no sharp denunciations of the violence from the black institutions that matter, no groundswell of anger or disgust on black college campuses, no marches or demonstrations led by self-appointed black leaders.

Had just one of these young men been killed by white police officers, the machinery of black protest would have revved into high gear, with press conferences, marches and demands for justice. The relatively muted response to the string of dead rappers — the suspected perpetrators are mostly other young black men — suggests that a dead black man matters most when his murder can be used as political propaganda.

Wow.

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Here's the New York Times coverage of the al-Qaeda document:

The Council of Holy Warriors, Al Qaeda's branch in Iraq, is worried that its cells in the Baghdad area are ineffective, with one militant describing their activities as nothing more than a "daily annoyance" to the Iraqi government, according to two documents released Monday by the United States military.

It's an AP article; not sure if it made it into the print edition. The editors chose not to devote a staff-written article to the news.

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Good obituary from The Economist of John Kenneth Galbraith.

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The military just released Al-Qaeda documents captured in a recent raid in Iraq:

At the same time, the Americans and the Government were able to absorb our painful blows, sustain them, compensate their losses with new replacements, and follow strategic plans which allowed them in the past few years to take control of Baghdad as well as other areas one after the other. That is why every year is worse than the previous year as far as the Mujahidin’s control and influence over Baghdad.

"Every year is worse than the last year."

I think this is huge news. Wonder if the editors of the New York Times will think so.

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Great roundup regarding Darfur at Instapundit.

One requires an active imagination to back military action in Darfur, but oppose efforts against Iraq and Iran.

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Once again, an informative post from Michael Yon. A friend of his is embedded with the Canadians in Afghanistan:

The Canadians are fighting more and more although few people seem to notice. Hopefully, Bill can help change that. No matter what anyone says, the Afghanistan I just left is easily as dangerous as the Iraq I spent almost a year in. But whereas we are beating back the enemies and winning in Iraq, the enemies in Afghanistan are getting stronger as the seconds tick. We need to listen to our military experts and to our young soldiers, too. Like Ernie Pyle once noted, nobody is more plainspoken than combat soldiers. The ones I met in Afghanistan call that the "forgotten war" but unless things change dramatically, 2007 will be a year everyone remembers in Afghanistan.

He's coming back to the States to write a book on the Battle of Mosul. Of the battle he says, "Our folks did an incredible job there — and that’s why we don’t see or hear much about Mosul in the news."

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Learn something new every day:

Historians agree that Geronimo died of pneumonia in 1909 and was buried in a prisoner-of-war cemetery at Fort Sill, Okla. But whether the Apache warrior's remains still rest there is a matter of growing dispute.

The grave of the famed warrior has long been rumored to have been robbed during World War I by a small group of young military officers that included Prescott Bush, the president's late grandfather, and other members of Yale University's secretive Skull and Bones society.

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It's true. An Islamic bank is the majority owner of the Caribou Coffee chain.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

This, on the other hand...

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I always though it was odd that CNN fired boring-but-stoic Aaron Brown in favor of boyishly simple Anderson Cooper. Now, it looks like it was a really bad idea:

CNN sacked Brown believing Cooper could draw a bigger, younger audaud at 10 p.m. But that hasn't happened. And the Vanity Fair cover hit just as April ratings showed Coop down 36 percent in the 25-54 demo, the younger aud he was supposed to attract.

It's certainly not for trying. CNN did all they could to promote Cooper. They plastered his face all over the country. I thought good newsmen had to earn their fame? Apparently, they still do.

By the way, did you know that Anderson Cooper is the son of Gloria Vanderbilt?

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Some stories just read better in a tabloid newspaper. Check out the coverage of Patrick Kennedy from my former haunt, the Boston Herald. You just can't get the full impact reading AP wire stories.

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TPM says Porter Goss resigned as CIA chief because he's connected to the Duke Cunningham bribery scandal. Hmmm...

I'd say there's more going on with Goss than meets the eye, although my morning newspaper says it's just because he was resisting recruiting more overseas spies. Interested to see how this all plays out.

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I'm a big fan of estate sales.

Now, estate sales are quite different from garage sales which are just clearinghouses of junk nobody wants. Estate sales -- although far more morbid -- contain a much better selection of useful goods. Estate sales are held by a family after a loved one dies. All the stuff in their house has to go somewhere, so the family holds an estate sale. Look, there's even a wikipedia entry on estate sales.

Here's my latest find from an estate sale:

I got this giant metal set of drawers for my garage. Great storage space, but the drawers were pre-filled with incredibly usefull stuff. Check it out:



And that's just two drawers! The other six are filled with tape, sandpaper, twine, hooks, nails, screws, washers, and paint brushes. I'll never go to Home Depot again!

If you ever see a sign for an estate sale, pull over.

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Roger Ebert gives "United 93" four stars:

There has been much discussion of the movie's trailer, and no wonder. It pieces together moments from "United 93" to make it seem more conventional, more like a thriller. Dialogue that seems absolutely realistic in context sounds, in the trailer, like sound bites and punch lines. To watch the trailer is to sense the movie that Greengrass did not make. To watch "United 93" is to be confronted with the grim chaotic reality of that September day in 2001.The movie is deeply disturbing, and some people may have to leave the theater. But it would have been much more disturbing if Greengrass had made it in a conventional way. He does not exploit, he draws no conclusions, he points no fingers, he avoids "human interest" and "personal dramas" and just simply watches. The movie's point of view reminds me of the angels in "Wings of Desire." They see what people do and they are saddened, but they cannot intervene.

So, I guess I will have to see it. But now it's kind of like "Schindlers List." I knew I should see it, but I was never in the mood.

Took me four years to finally watch that one.

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The Wall Street Journal answered the question I asked a few days ago: Why is gasoline so cheap in Wyoming?

The headline from today's front page article: "A Discount Dynasty in Wyoming Keeps the Gasoline Cheap: Pioneers of no-frills stations, the Calls have cut costs for three generations."

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I shouldn't let the passing of Louis Rukeyser go without mention. I came late to Rukeyser's genius, only discovering his show at the same time I became interested in the stock market -- around the fall of 2000. In hindsight, an incredibly ironic bit of timing on my part.

Despite the stock market's woes, I was a faithful watcher of Loo-Roo for the next couple of years. Rukeyser's delivery was always entertaining and informative. And, he had the driest sense of humor on the planet. He will be missed.

Here's a good bit from the NY Times obituary:

...[Rukeyser] could be openly contemptuous of professional investors, a sentiment many of them warmly reciprocated. Mr. Rukeyser reserved his most withering scorn for the "gloomy Guses" and "Wrong-Way Corrigans" who warned of financial troubles that, during the prosperous 1990's, never transpired.

Unfortunately, the Times article fails to capture his great wit. Here's hoping the Economist honors him with an obituary later this week.

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This is Damn Interesting:

At the height of the Cold War in the late 1950s, all international communications were either sent through undersea cables or bounced off of the natural ionosphere. The United States military was concerned that the Soviets (or other "Hostile Actors") might cut those cables, forcing the unpredictable ionosphere to be the only means of communication with overseas forces. ... Their solution was to create an artificial ionosphere. In May 1963, the US Air Force launched 480 million tiny copper needles that briefly created a ring encircling the entire globe. They called it Project West Ford...

The story checks out. Pretty incredible.

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Wow. Read this post from The Belmont Club. It calls attention to Barry McCaffrey's report on his recent trip to Iraq. Here's a good chunk:

The point of the US war effort is to create legitimate and competent Iraqi national, provincial, and municipal governance. We are at a turning point in the coming six months. The momentum is now clearly with the Iraqi Government and the Coalition Security Forces. The Sunnis are coming into the political process. They will vote in December. Unlike the Balkans—the Iraqis want this to succeed. Foreign fighters are an enormously lethal threat to the Iraqi civilian population, the ISF, and Coalition Forces in that order. However, they will be an increasing political disaster for the insurgency.

He's been a vocal critic of the post-invasion strategy, so this shouldn't be dismissed as more pro-war puffery. But, why should we listen to McCaffrey?

After all, he's just a retired general.

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Michael Yon on Afghanistan:

The place is bad. Really bad. And it’s getting worse. Yesterday an Indian engineer was murdered. They cut off his head. Also, yesterday, the car bomb in the photo above exploded close by some employees of a friend. I was close by two bombings in just six days in Lashkar Gah, a place they used to call “safe.”

And now we're handing over power to NATO who've insisted that they're not there to fight terrorists. Seems like a bad move.

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I'd say this guy's sign pretty much sums up how I feel about the whole immigration thing. And, let me tell you, I love authentic Mexican burritos.

By the way, there's a great Mexican-owned restaurant in Roswell, Ga., called Mr. Taco.

Now, first of all, I don't know how you can drive by a place called Mr. Taco. What a fantastic name! I can't believe it's not a chain.

Secondly, a Taco Bell sits across the street from Mr. Taco. Whenever I drive by (on my way to Mr. Taco), I always see customers in the Taco Bell. Who are these people who would rather eat corporate Mexican food instead of authentic Mexican burritos from a place called Mr. Taco?

Thirdly, the reason Mr. Taco is so good is because no one in the joint can speak any English. I've tried to have a conversation with the clerks on numerous occasions. I just get friendly, wide grins in response.

Which bring's me to Duffy's Law of Mexican Food:

No Habla Englais = Good Mexican Food

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My good friend Henry Gekonde was recently featured in this National Public Radio report about his work to help preserve the Kenyan language of Kisii. We worked together at that "small newspaper in Southern New Hampshire."

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Saw "Secondhand Lions" last night. It was fair-to-middling in quality -- saved by the performances of Michael Caine and Robert Duvall. The film featured an incredibly overwrought performance from Haley Joel Osment, that kid from M. Night Shyamalan's "The Sixth Sense."

The film made me admire Shyamalan even more because one thing's for sure -- Osment can't act.

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