Bill's Moment

"You should make a conscious decision for words over deeds, for a feeling over the fact of change," Clinton said early this afternoon. "It's your country, you can do whatever you want, you own it ... You can make a judgment and it's your country, but don't go into this thing thinking there are no judgments and there's no decision to make."

So said Bill Clinton to New Hampshire crowds after Obama's win in Iowa, according to this Salon piece on Bill's "passive-agressive" pitch.

You gotta think this is Bill Clinton's moment, at least in his mind. (I know, it's always Bill's moment in his mind, but I mean more than usual.) Hillary's Iowa debacle endangers both of their futures. Now he finds himself making what might be the final big play of their partnership in New Hampshire. It was there in 1992 that the self-proclaimed "Comeback Kid" escaped the first trap he set for himself to blow up on the national level -- Gennifer Flowers. With Hillary Wynette playing her role on "60 Minutes," Bill managed to come in second behind Paul Tsongas, and all the elements of the Clinton psychodrama America was to witness for years to come were in place.

A big part of this drama has been Bill's vaunted ability to connect with people, one on one and in crowds, which established something strong enough to overcome whatever people felt about his personal shortcomings. It oddly echoed what most people assumed held their marriage together: some kind of agreement that their partnership was more important than their marriage vows.

But Bill is not on the ballot this time, and his aura may not be enough to save Hillary's candidacy. And now the undisputed master of the politics of feelings is reduced to begging people to use their heads and ignore that fuzzy feeling they get from Obama.

I feel his pain.

Iowa

I was wondering if the candidates could attend the Iowa carcasses, and the AP has the answer:

Iowans rendered their judgments in meetings at 1,781 precincts from Adel to Zwingle, in schools, firehouses and community centers where the candidates themselves could not follow.

Some hard numbers, as of late Thursday night:

• Projections estimated that 220,588 Democrats showed up on a cold midwinter's night, shattering the previous mark of 124,000. Turnout was also up on the Republican side, where projections showed about 114,000 people taking part. The last previous contested Republican caucuses in 2000 drew 87,666 participants.
  
  
• Obama also outpolled Clinton among women, and benefited from a surge in first-time caucus-goers. More than half of those who participated said they had never been to a caucus before, and Obama won the backing of roughly 40 percent of them. Edwards did best among veteran caucus-goers, garnering 30 percent of their vote. Obama and Clinton each got about a quarter of their support.
  
  
• An AP analysis of Iowa's Republican caucuses estimated that Huckabee would win 30 delegates to the national convention and Romney would win 7.
  Obama's victory was much narrower in the race for delegates. The AP analysis estimated Obama would win 16 delegates, compared to 15 for Clinton and 14 for Edwards. Clinton will win more delegates than Edwards, despite getting fewer votes, because of Iowa's complicated caucus system.
  
  
• In the overall race for the nomination, Clinton leads with 175 delegates, including superdelegates, followed by Obama with 75 and Edwards with 46.

And this interesting item:

Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio publicly urged his backers to line up with Obama on a second round, and two Democrats said aides to New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson did likewise as the caucuses unfolded.

Not A "Legend"

Saw "I Am Legend" last night. Mediocre. Charlton Heston's "The Omega Man" from 1971 is far superior.

"Legend" does some things well. Will Smith is always entertaining; yes, the FX are good, sometimes amazing, particularly the decayed New York City; and it is not nearly as violent or gruesome as it could have been. And while Smith finds himself in some cliched situations, the filmmakers thankfully avoided one big one that could have really killed the flick altogether (involves a spoiler, so I'll leave it at that.)

We never learn much about the zombies that stalk Smith, who exhibit some combination of human intelligence and animal savagery and teamwork. They are never developed as characters if you will, but rather come across as merely teaming hordes of video game bad guys -- which is of course what they are. (I expect there is/will be a game, and I expect the game zombies to come from the same bits and bytes.)

The focus is all on Smith's Mr. Neville -- his daily routine, his loneliness, his dog. (The dog has more personality than all the zombies put together. Is that because it's a real dog?) It reminded me of Tom Hanks, all alone in "Castaway," talking to his soccer ball Wilson.

Like so many movies they make nowadays, on the level of craft, "Legend" is light years beyond a cheesy relic like "Omega Man," but it has no magic. All the elements of a good movie are supposedly there, but the ingredients remain inert, and the experiment fails. (Well, this failure had a $76 million dollar opening, but you know what I mean.)

I take perverse pleasure in Hollywood continually proving that movie making, like other art forms, cannot be reduced to a paint-by-numbers formula.

Peter Jackson to Produce "The Hobbit"

Peter Jackson, director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, has signed on as executive producer for two movies based on "The Hobbit," J.R.R. Tolkien's prequel to the LOTR.

Jackson had been fighting the LOTR producers, New Line Cinema, over profits from the trilogy, but they've apparently kissed and made up. They're looking for a director for the "Hobbit."

The AP says "two "Hobbit" films are scheduled to be shot simultaneously, similar to how the three 'Lord of the Rings' films were made. Production is set to begin in 2009 with a released planned for 2010, with the sequel scheduled for a 2011 release."

Google's Knols

Google has announced a "new, free tool that we are calling "knol", which stands for a unit of knowledge." Currently invitation-only, it sounds like a direct challenge to Wikipedia: "A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read."

With perhaps a key difference:

The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors' names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors -- but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content.

Which in addition to all the "comments, questions, edits, additional content, and so on" others can add, means that "a knol may include ads. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with substantial revenue share from the proceeds of those ads."

Can't wait to see this rolled out.

Independents and Illegals

Buried inside this Politico story on immigration politics and the GOP:

A late October study by senior Democratic strategists Stan Greenberg, Al Quinlan and James Carville found that for independents — roughly a third of voters — the “top issue underlying the discontent is ‘our borders’ having been ‘left unprotected and illegal immigration’ growing.”

The issue was cited by four in 10 independents, which was nearly double the rate at which independents referenced the war in Iraq.

Fast News Cycle

Wow, the election coverage sure is reaching a frantic pace. Mike Huckabee is now apologizing to Mitt Romney for something he hasn't even said yet. His comments on Mormonism in a New York Times Magazine interview won't actually appear until this Sunday, but why wait? So the Huck started backpedaling on Wednesday, which is a brilliant technique for staying ahead of the curve when you think about it: just start apologizing today for anything stupid you or may not say next week.

I also like how FoxNews.com asked Romney if "if he believed Huckabee was speaking in a coded language to evangelicals." "Coded language?" Look closely at what Huckabee said and see if you can spot the code:

"Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?"

Stairway to Zep

Buzz Feed has a collection of reviews and video clips of the Led Zeppelin reunion gig.

The band sounds pretty good, but Robert Plant's live voice long ago lost all those high notes. Same for Jagger, but Plant had further to fall and can't carry the bottom end very well. Not to beat up on Plant -- every one of those classic rock singers pretty much blew out his live voice many, many tours ago.

The only exception I know of is Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. I've seen him sing live on several TV shows well into this decade and it appears that guy can still belt out anything he ever did on record. McCartney's voice was great at the Super Bowl a few years back, but the only one I've seen who can still really lean into the mic and just howl for a few measures is Tyler.

"The Screening of America"

Here is a delightfully snobby editorial from The New Republic about the widely reported decline in American's reading habits, and the parallel decline of serious book reviews in some quarters of journalism. Excerpts:

In some quarters, the enemies of the printed book pretend that they are merely trying to save the book from the print--"the last bastion of analog," as Jeff Bezos ominously told a reporter from Newsweek (prepare the gallows!); to save reading by digitalizing it.

I think it's quite possible that digitizing books for reading on hand-held gadgets may do for the book what the downloadable MP3 has done for the LP. (That is, render it increasingly obsolete as as an artistic medium and as a viable commodity).

In other quarters--in our quarter, in American journalism--a new anxiety about profits has combined with an old philistinism to produce a kind of informal national purge of book reviewers and book reviewing.

[...]

No, the e-book is not the end of civilization. If readers kindle to the Kindle, splendid: Any reading is better than no reading. Nothing valuable was ever preserved solely on Luddite grounds. The screening of America will inevitably come to include our encounters with serious prose, or what is rather comically described in our culture of speed as "long form." (Meanwhile the Internet is re-educating the planet for a largely audio-visual life in short form, but that is another vexation.) And yet it is neither sentimentality nor snobbery to insist that what we mean by the experience of reading may be singularly indebted to the printed book, to its physicality and its temporality.

[...]

In recent years, in-house book reviewing has been eliminated, abridged, or downgraded by the Atlanta Journal- Constitution, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Cleveland's Plain Dealer, The San Diego Union-Tribune--the list goes on. The same cannot be said about management's enthusiasm for, say, sports, or food. "Committing resources" is not least a philosophical exercise: A newspaper discloses its view of the world clearly by what it chooses to cover and not to cover, and with what degree of rigor and pride. When you deprive the coverage of books of adequate space and talent, you are declaring that books are not important, even if you and your wife belong to a book club and your Amazon account is a mile long.

[...]

[B]ook reviewing is not blogging, even if a lot of blogging is book reviewing. Not everybody who can boil an egg is a food critic and not everybody who can hit a softball is a sportswriter. There are, or there should be, intellectual qualifications for the task, because there are urgent things at stake--at least as long as the citizens of this country continue to agree that beliefs, and the methods by which they are formed, matter.

[...]

A newspaper--and a magazine: we ourselves have not been immune from these pressures--is a business, not a charity; and capitalists cannot be impugned for seeking profit. Yet there are properties that are not just properties, but also pillars of a culture and institutions of a society. To regard them simply as businesses is to misunderstand them. In the ownership of a newspaper, the hunger for gain must surely be diversified by a sensation of stewardship. There are many companies in America that are not implicated in the public values of American life, but media companies are not among them. That is the extra-economic burden that they bear, though in many cases they are plentifully compensated for these inconveniently lofty obligations. The responsible and lively and ambitious coverage of books may not be much of a revenue stream, but it is a formidable thought stream, and knowledge stream; and it should be an honor to preside over it. When a book review is done well, it transcends leisure. It inducts its reader into the enchanted circle of those who really live by their minds. It is a small but significant aid to genuine citizenship, to meaningful living.

Ten Most Stupidest Bumper Stickers

This is a pretty good list, with comments by Atomic Trousers I heartily endorse.

Via Jonah at the Corner.

"Tim Russert Must Be Stopped"

This bit from the Stump at New Republic about Tim Russert's worthless schtick says it all:

I thought Obama held his own on "Meet the Press" yesterday, which is about the best one can hope for on that show. How we got to the point where one of the most important rituals in politics involves playing gotcha for an hour on network television is beyond me. It's a completely preposterous exercise, and Russert was closer to self-parody yesterday than I've
seen him in a while. I can't recall a single question that straight-up asked Obama to lay out his first-order thoughts on an issue, as opposed to addressing some alleged inconsistency or hypocrisy.

I heard the beginning of the interview on the radio. About the second thing out of Russert's mouth was some quote Obama gave last year where he minimized the differences between Hillary and him. "Senator, do you still believe that?" And we're off.

Tim Russert's show is a complete waste. He can have a guy like Barack Obama on for an hour long one-on-one, and you come away with almost nothing, no sense of what makes this candidate tick, nothing with which to weigh him versus other contenders. Instead you're forced to endure Russert throwing his spaghetti at his guest hoping something sticks.

Land of Twins

11/12 wire story:

Nigeria's 'Land of Twins' Baffles Fertility Experts

Igbo-Ora, a sleepy farming community in southwest Nigeria, welcomes visitors with a sign proclaiming "The Land of Twins". "There is hardly a family here without a set of twins," said community leader Olayide kinyemi, a 71-year-old father of 12, as he settled a dispute between two neighbours. "My father had 10 sets, while I had three sets. But only one set, a male and a female, survived," he said. The town's high incidence of twins has baffled fertility experts -- underscoring a more regional twin trend and an array of elaborate African rituals around them.

The rate of identical twins is pretty steady throughout the world at about 0.5 percent of all births, according to a 1995 study by Belgian researcher Fernand Leroy, who has worked extensively on twins. But West Africa bucks that trend, particularly with a much higher incidence of fraternal, or non-identical twins than in Europe or Japan. That is especially true, experts say, amongst Nigeria's Yoruba community which is largely concentrated in the southwestern part of the country where Igbo-Ora is located.

Overall, almost 5 percent of all Yoruba births produce twins, the Belgian study said, compared with just around 1.2 percent for Western Europe and 0.8 percent for Japan -- although fertility drugs in the developed world are changing those figures.

Yam consumption may be one explanation for Africa's largesse, some West Africans and Western experts believe. Yams contain a natural hormone phytoestrogen which may stimulate the ovaries to produce an egg from each side.

For their part, Igbo-Ora's residents appear nonplussed about their twin phenomenon. Some like Akinyemi support the yam theory -- and point specifically to the reputedly high oestrogen content of agida, the local name for yam tubers. "We eat a lot of okro leaf or Ilasa soup. We also consume a lot of agida. This diet influences multiple births," he said.

Others are not so sure. "The real cause of the phenomenon has not been medically found," said Akin Odukogbe, a senior consultant gynaecologist with the University Teaching Hospital (UCH) in Ibadan, the nearest big town. "But people attribute the development to diet," he continued, adding that studies have shown that yam can make women produce more than one egg which can be fertilised.

Chief nursing officer at the hospital Muyibi Yomi, who records a monthly average of five twins for every 100 births, puts it all down to genetics. "If a family has a history of multiple births, this will continue from generation to generation," she said.

Feelings

In an AP story about President Bush's reaction to the situation in Pakistan, his spokeswoman was quoted saying:

"The president feels very strongly that President Musharraf knows exactly how he
feels about the situation," [Dana] Perino said.'

No, we musn't talk about the president's feelings, and certainly not twice in one sentence. It's just not polite.

Try this:

"The president has made his position perfectly clear to President Musharraf."

Yes, that's better.

Battle at Kruger

"A battle between a pride of lions, a herd of buffalo, and 2 crocodiles at a watering hole in South Africa's Kruger National Park while on safari."

You gotta see this one.

Benazir Bhutto is Brave

In the face of death threats and now a massive suicide bombing attack on Thursday targeting her transportation convoy, Bhutto is laying it on the line in the Washington Post:

"We are prepared to risk our lives and we are prepared to risk our liberty, but we are not prepared to surrender our great nation to the militants."


Seeking background and insight into this drama, I was surprised to see no major coverage of this today at either National Review Online or The Weekly Standard. Shouldn't we be loudly trumpeting a major figure in the region who is not only using her voice but risking her life to defy the assorted thugs aiming themselves in her general direction?

I know nothing about the alleged corruption during her two previous terms as prime minister, or what the prospects are for her reaching an accommodation with Musharraf, and how delicate all this is for America's interest and position in the region.

But because Al Qaeda always makes it so "bloody obvious" where they stand, I do know her return to Pakistan is the equivalent of a daring beachhead invasion in the larger struggle against violent Islam. Many millions are watching her courage in the face of death. If this region is to ascend to normalcy, it will be in no small part due to leaders like Bhutto who personally embody the cause of life and freedom, and rally the millions to her side, rather than to the side of the Bin Ladens, who from the shadows send others to die for a doomed cult.

From Here to Eternity

Deborah Kerr, 86, just passed away. She starred opposite Cary Grant in the best chick flick ever, "An Affair to Remember." Here is her Washington Post obituary. RIP

Pulling the Curtain Back on "Peanuts"

If you're about 35 or older, you grew up with Charles Schulz's comic strip "Peanuts." And if you didn't, well,

According to David Michaelis' new biography, "Schulz and Peanuts," by 1971, Schulz had 100 million readers and the fourth-highest sales figures of any 20th century author.

According to Salon's review of the biography, it's a warts-and-all kind of book. Just reading the review is enough warts for me, thank you. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that creator of the first comic strip whose characters had an inner life of existential angst was a -- how do we say? -- "complex" person:

Somehow, without (it seems) actually trying to, Schulz succeeded at making all of his readers think that his strip was about them.

Actually, it was about him. Michaelis reveals that the upshot of Snoopy's brush with campus protest -- a breathless romance with a "girl-beagle" who had "the softest paws" -- was inspired by Schulz's extramarital affair with a 25-year-old office worker named Tracey Claudius. Snoopy's sentimental swooning over his lady love was no exaggeration, either; Schulz inundated Claudius with doting notes and flowers and gifts commemorating each month of their "anniversary." For the straight-arrow Schulz, the affair was a first foray into adultery after almost 20 years in a marriage that, while difficult, produced four kids and underpinned the most productive period of his life. Claudius, who regarded "Peanuts" as "holy," was terrified when he took her to the Tonga Room in San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel, convinced that the newspaper columnist Herb Caen would spot them and blow their cover. "I would be the one that would ruin his image for the world," she told Michaelis. "God! If I'd found this out when I was reading it, I would have been crushed. Charlie Brown wouldn't be innocent to me any longer."

Some readers may feel much the same after finishing Michaelis' biography. Not, however, about the affair with Claudius, which was heartfelt and, in its own small way, tragic. Schulz was no philanderer, though he was prone to crushes on "distant princesses" (cf, Charlie Brown's little red-headed girl). Rather, it's learning about the depressive, anxious, detached, resentful, self-defeating and self-deceiving personality of the comic strip's creator that's likely to puzzle and sadden some of those who grew up with "Peanuts."

Sure Beats "Boxers or Briefs?"

Rudy took the Alien Invasion question the other day from a young boy. Captured on video here.

Wash Post: "Al-Qaeda In Iraq Reported Crippled"

The opening line of this Washington Post story should make you want to read the whole thing:

The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.

Details on al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI):

There is widespread agreement that AQI has suffered major blows over the past three months. Among the indicators cited is a sharp drop in suicide bombings, the group's signature attack, from more than 60 in January to around 30 a month since July. Captures and interrogations of AQI leaders over the summer had what a senior military intelligence official called a "cascade effect," leading to other killings and captures. The flow of foreign fighters through Syria into Iraq has also diminished, although officials are unsure of the reason and are concerned that the broader al-Qaeda network may be diverting new recruits to Afghanistan and elsewhere.

There appears to be a variety of opinions within the civilian and military leadership as to how damaged AQI is, and whether to actually proclaim victory. But it is heartening that the question is even being asked.

Wikipedia's Growth

From The American comes this this item about Wikipedia's astonishing growth:

There’s ample concern about the quality of Wikipedia, the Web-based encyclopedia which any reader can edit and whose entries top practically any Google search you do. But there’s no question about the quantity. The total database grows by tens of millions of words each month. A fast reader who never needs to sleep, charging ahead at 400 words per minute, would still be unable to read as fast as new content is being created, let alone catch up with the vast amount of text already published. The English-language version alone, at last count, had over 609 million words—more than 15 Encyclopedia Britannicas put together.

Take a look at the graph on this page. While still rising quickly, the English version of Wikipedia now comprises only about one-fourth of the total words in all editions, which include more than 200 languages. Among them: Basque, Arabic, Esperanto, Latvian, Inuktitut (Eskimo), and Cherokee. There’s even a Latin version, with a suitably collaborative motto: Vicipaedia cooperandi opus est.