I'm off to Maine. Be back in about 10 days. My boat-building book arrived, so I should make some good progress upon my return. Oh, and our turtle escaped from the pond. Gitmo, it's not.

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One of my co-workers, a friendly Brit named Willie Quennell, challenged me yesterday to a Hawaiian shirt contest. He suggested we both wear the most outrageous, gaudy Hawaiian shirts in our collections to see who had the most tasteless wardrobe.

Great idea. I quickly agreed.



Willie won.

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Here's the biggest tantrum ever thrown by a baseball manager:



After the game, Asheville Tourists manager Joe Mikulik said: "I don't think I ever lost total control, though it may look like it."

He fooled me.

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Great editorial in the WSJ today on global warming:

First, nonscientists generally do not want to bother with understanding the science. Claims of consensus relieve policy types, environmental advocates and politicians of any need to do so. Such claims also serve to intimidate the public and even scientists -- especially those outside the area of climate dynamics. Secondly, given that the question of human attribution largely cannot be resolved, its use in promoting visions of disaster constitutes nothing so much as a bait-and-switch scam. That is an inauspicious beginning to what Mr. Gore claims is not a political issue but a "moral" crusade.

Lastly, there is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition. An earlier attempt at this was accompanied by tragedy. Perhaps Marx was right. This time around we may have farce -- if we're lucky.

The author is an MIT professor of atmospheric science. Guess there is no academic consensus, after all.

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OK, I've cleaned out the garage and organized my work bench. Now, I've just got to crack open this giant crate.

This is the boat kit I ordered from Glen-L boat building company in California. I could've built the whole boat from scratch, but the guy at Glen-L warned against it. The way he put it: "Nobody ever got a boat kit and wished they hadn't. But, plenty of people opt to go without the kit and wish they hadn't."

I did decide against the buying the boat-building book that Glen-L sells for $35. The guy made it sound like the instructions that came with the boat kit would be easy enough to follow. He said plenty of amateur builders bought the book but never had to crack it. Sure, I thought, why waste the 35 bucks?

Then I opened the instructions. Here are two of the eight pages:



The book should be here by Tuesday.

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I'm tired of writing about political stuff, so I've decided to turn this blog into a record of my effort to build a boat. Look, I even changed the subtitle!

I'm not sure how this will go, but I feel like I'm ready.

In addition to my undercabinet sliding baskets, I've also built a tree-house:

(Note the trap-door with a pulley.)

And, I've built a pond and nature habitat for our pet turtle, Hammy:

And I've built that screen porch that I mentioned months ago:

If you look closely you can see my wife's bra hanging from a clothesline inside. She just left for a six-week vacation with the kids. I plan on it still hanging there when she returns.

I figure this family vacation will give me a lot of time to build my boat, although I'll be joining them in Maine for the week of July 4.

So, tomorrow I'll post my progress on the boat so far. It will mainly center around cleaning the garage so that I have room to work.

Now, don't get me wrong -- I'll still probably blog politics and journalism from time to time, but I find myself tired of trying to drum up copy for those subjects. Just go read Instapundit, he's much more interesting.

Please stay tuned.

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Good read in the New York Times about the battle over outsiders on the Dartmouth board:

It began when candidates for the governing board of trustees endorsed by the Alumni Association were unexpectedly defeated two years in a row by outsiders who got on the ballot by petition. The outsiders accused the college administration of sacrificing free speech to political correctness and of abandoning Dartmouth's historical focus on undergraduates to turn it into a "junior varsity Harvard."

Now the officers of the Dartmouth Alumni Association have canceled a coming vote for new executive officers and are proposing a constitution with new rules for how candidates get on the ballot. Critics say the effort is intended to block outsiders from gaining yet more seats.

The barbarians have arrived.

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Only in a Boston newspaper would one read the following sentence:

Reinstein fired off an e-mail announcing her own legislation designating the Fluffernutter the "official sandwich of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts."

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Here's the Web site of one of my favorite actors. Ricky Jay is a real-life master of deception who makes a living as a character actor. You probably recognize him from a David Mamet or P.T. Anderson film.

I heard an interview with him on NPR about 5 years ago. He's a little sheepish about it, but I think he was a real con man back in the day. (He always plays one in Mamet's films.) Now, he sells this knowledge through his company, "Deceptive Practices."

The firm's slogan: "Arcane knowledge on a need-to-know basis."

UPDATE: Here's the link to the NPR interview.

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This should strike terror in the heart of anyone who trusts their financial adviser:

Psychologists from Princeton University said Tuesday they’ve found a strong relationship between the short-term success of an initial public offering and how fluently investors can pronounce the name of a company and its ticker symbol.

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Went to the Red Sox game in Atlanta today. Red Sox 5, Atlanta 3. It was like Fenway Park South. Half the fans were rooting for Boston.

It was a great game. I love baseball. No other sport comes close.

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Yes, Jim Cramer is insane. His old CNBC show with Larry Kudlow was entertaining, but on his new show he's simply lost his mind. I can't believe anyone finds his antics entertaining.

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I don't know if this is really "the most shocking event in comic book history." But, it's an interesting turn of events.

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Great post from Instapundit on the documents seized after the Al-Zarqawi strike. The data (found on a laptop and flash drive -- those terrorists are pretty techno-geeky) shows the extent to which Al Qaeda in Iraq wants to win the battle of media perceptions.

Instapundit notes correctly:

Yet the press -- which can be exquisitely sensitive about being manipulated when it cares -- isn't worried about the way it's being used here, at least not enough to matter in its coverage. But why should it be? Ethics might cost money.

Great point.

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Given the amount of money we were throwing about after Katrina, this is hardly surprising:

The government doled out as much as $1.4 billion in bogus assistance to victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, getting hoodwinked to pay for season football tickets, a tropical vacation and even a divorce lawyer, congressional investigators have found.

Perhaps we should be happy it was only $1.4 billion.

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Interesting article from Fast Company about the Hewlett-Packard 12c. The device debuted in the early 80s and has barely evolved for more than 25 years:

So what to make of the Hewlett-Packard 12c, essentially unchanged since its 1981 debut and, 15 million units later, still one of the company's top-selling calculators? Everything it does can be replicated--in some cases, with far greater ease--on an Excel spreadsheet. Yet after 25 years, the 12c remains a tool of choice among finance and real estate professionals worldwide. It is still, as one junior analyst put it, "part of the banker's kit"--an unquestioned marker of credibility, if not good breeding.

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Good read from Fortune magazine on the Chineese railroad to Tibet. If you can overlook their subjugation of the Tibetans, it's really quite a marvel of engineering.

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I need to bury an electrical cable that I'm running out to the pump on the small turtle pond I just built in my back yard. Wasn't sure how deep to bury it, so I Googled the question. I came across this message board thread which didn't really help but provides a nice window into the subculture of electricians.

Apparently, there's an undercurrent of hatred for Home Depot that we didn't know existed. Took me a few minutes to decipher the reference to "Evil Orange."

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This is great. Blogger Matt Murphy took the time to compile all the news reports that make sure we realize how killing Zaraqawi isn't really that big a deal.

The killing of terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was a stunning victory for U.S. forces, but Iraq remains a nation beset by deeply rooted problems that threaten to push it deeper into chaos. There are few expectations that Zarqawi's death will change that.

There were no "Mission Accomplished" banners or joyous celebrations at the White House. Feelings of satisfaction about killing Iraq's most wanted terrorist were tempered by the certainty of more death and bad days in a war increasingly unpopular at home.

U.S. forces have succeeded in finding key fugitives in Iraq -- Abu Musab al-Zarqawi being the latest -- but face bigger obstacles in catching al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, former Taliban chief Mullah Omar and other wanted men.

I suppose that's just objective journalism. But, given the joyous reactions of Iraqis, couldn't one expect some articles to reflect the news positively.

Check out his blog for more examples.

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I suppose I should crow about Zawqari's death. But, I won't.

I will simply say that I believe his death and the political appointments in Iraq will lead the country to stability.

In five years, Iraq will be a fully functioning democracy pumping 5 million barrels or oil a day into the world supply. Other countries in the Mideast will look to Iraq as a beacon of hope and freedom. And democracy will spread.

This democracy -- in a region that has seen very little of it -- will eventually lead to a world with fewer terrorists.

That's what I believe.

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Ebert gives 3 stars (a thumbs up) to the remake of "The Omen." I hadn't planned on seeing it since the original was so awesome. But, perhaps I'll check it out.

I'd say Ebert's got this right:

I've observed before that when it comes to dealing with demons and suchlike, Roman Catholics have the market cornered. Preachers of other faiths can foam and foment all they want about satanic cults, but when it comes to knowing the ground rules and reading ominous signs, what you want at the bedside is a priest who knows his way around an exorcism.

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Look. Wikipedia even has an entry for Carrie Ingalls, the little sister of Laura Ingalls -- of Little House fame.

It doesn't say whether she really fell down that ventilation shaft of that old abandoned mine. That was a great episode.

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Here's an interesting column from the Denver Post on the global warming debate -- which really isn't a debate on college campuses:

Another highly respected climatologist, Roger Pielke Sr. at the University of Colorado, is also skeptical.

Pielke contends there isn't enough intellectual diversity in the debate. He claims a few vocal individuals are quoted "over and over" again, when in fact there are a variety of opinions.

I questioned global warming on campus last year and you'd have thought I questioned the moon landing.

Nobody's saying it's not getting warmer -- we skeptics just wonder how we've concluded with such certainty that it's manmade emissions causing the warming. After all, the Earth's warmed up in the past because of natural causes.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

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Fascinating obituary in the New York Times of Alan Kotok who helped develop the first video game:

As a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Kotok developed an interest in computers after joining the M.I.T. Model Railroad Club in the late 1950's. Its membership included several other young men who shared his interest, and the organization became a kind of incubator for the computer design field.

The students were the original computer hackers, at least as they defined the term. Today it also refers to a computer outlaw, but the term originally described a member of a subculture of passionate hardware and software designers. A "hack" was a project without constructive end, according to a dictionary compiled by the Model Railroad members.

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Good roundup from Instapundit on the Toronto terror arrest story. Note Roger Simon's opinions on how the story was played in the NY Times. These are just disaffected youths, not Islamic fascists.

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According to George Will, Oliver Wendell Holmes had it right more than 100 years ago:

[A] policeman "may have a constitutional right to talk politics, but he has no constitutional right to be a policeman."

It's an important distinction.

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Fellow blogger Brad Warbiany had a conversation with John Konop, a Republican trying to oust our 6th District Congressman, Tom Price. He relayed his chat on his blog. Here's an excerpt:

I asked him pointedly why someone who was against our free trade agreements, and was buddy-buddy with the Minutemen, would get support from the libertarians. Throughout our chat, I began to see why. Very early in the chat, he brought out one of the big guns, Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations. John easily understands the difference between capitalism and corporatism, and it’s quite easy to see which one he favors. He points to immigration and NAFTA/CAFTA, as well as the energy bill, Sarbannes-Oxley, etc, basically as protections and giveaways to monopoly and big business power. These are all things I can agree with, and I’m starting to understand why the libertarians are supporting him. I don’t know him well enough to take his word that he’s the “Ron Paul” of Georgia, but he did say that if he gets elected, he plans to join the Republican Liberty Caucus, which is a very good start.

I share Brad's concerns. These detail about his positions differ from the perception I got from looking at Konop's Web site.

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This is best interactive graphic I've ever seen. It's a timeline map of the flooding of New Orleans.

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I love superheroes. Apparently the editors of Business Week do to. Here's a compilation of the smartest superheroes around.

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