"He's crushing his testicles in tight trousers for world peace."

Sex Pistol John Lydon, venting about Bono.

950 Iraqis Die in Stampede.

No bomb is needed to kill hundreds of people once they are gathered in a big crowd. Merely yelling that there is a bomb is devastatingly ef...

Rapex!

We've got you now, rapists! (Via Metafilter .) A South African inventor unveiled a new anti-rape female condom on Wednesday that hooks ...

A Ten Commandments monument survives judicial scrutiny.

The Eighth Circuit, applying the newest Supreme Court cases, says yes to a 40-year-old, stone monument in Plattsmouth. Dissenting judges ob...

"Dead people and live ones mix with bugs and rats in the green, fetid water and the August heat."

The great American city we have loved, New Orleans " is gone : buried beneath the sea, fouled by the waters its levees, canals, and pum...

Telephone call.

I am calling for a national coalition of law professors looking for signatures for a letter opposing the nomination of John Roberts... That ...

"We have an American refugee situation on our hands."

Said a Red Cross spokeswoman about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: "We have a mass migration of people who are homeless. It is an ...

Why do so many Americans favor teaching creationism?

A new poll shows that almost two-thirds of Americans think public schools ought to teach children about creationism when they teach evoluti...

Looting and charges of racism.

On Metafilter, one member thought he'd found shocking evidence of racism in reporting the news about looting in New Orleans, and many m...

Katrina talk, Bush talk.

I haven't gone looking — not very far , at least — but I'm expecting to see the talk about Katrina turn into talk about Bush. There...

"A Marxist Perspective on Darkness on the Edge of Town."

An academic conference on Bruce Springsteen. There are things less cool.

The Amsterdam Notebooks—Page 31.

It's Day 31 of this 35 day project . ( The set thus far. ) This is the page of the notebooks that has the least to do with Amsterdam. I ...

"You should have seen the cars floating around us. We had to push them away when we were trying to swim."

Biloxi.

New Orleans.

Sorry I don't know how to link to this properly, but go to CNN.com and click on "Watch: Screams for help," an emotional and d...

A word of advice to Bill Maher and Jon Stewart.

You need to restock your audiences. It's too packed with fans who are inflating your sense of how smart and funny you are. They may love...

Interview with a "Six Feet Under" writer.

Television Without Pity has an interview with Jill Soloway, one of the "Six Feet Under" writers. Re the pregnant Rachel Griffith:...

Must — should — the man witness childbirth?

Here 's an interesting piece in Slate about how harshly people reacted to the news that witnessing childbirth destroyed some men's s...

"The major problem is one of who is agreeing, not what they have agreed on. "

NYU lawprof Noah Feldman , who was a senior adviser for constitutional law to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, has an important ...

"He's a home wrecker. He's trying to rip a father away from a child, and rip a husband away from a wife."

So says a 22-year-old man who married the 14-year-old girl he impregnated. He's being prosecuted for statutory rape. (To marry, they cr...

The Amsterdam Notebooks—Page 30.

It's Day 30 of this 35 day project . ( The set thus far. ) Not much happening on this page. Just walking around, hanging out in a café. ...

An eerie wall.

This odd mural is a familiar sight in Madison, Wisconsin.

"The Comeback."

Did you enjoy the second-to-the-last episode of "The Comeback"? There were some richly satisfying moments this week, especially re...

Hoping for better written Supreme Court opinions.

Stories like this , about John Roberts's attention to editing and writing style, have inspired me to hope for far better written Supreme...

"This is a living document, as all constitutions are."

Here's an interesting part of Tim Russert's "Meet the Press" interview with the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilza...

6 foot holes open in the Superdome.

With 9,000 people inside waiting out the hurricane.

Two things I started to watch on HBO but didn't finish.

1. "Rome." (First episode of the series.) 2. "Real Time With Bill Maher." (First episode of the new season.) "Rome...

Pencils.

Here 's a blog that's charmingly and prettily about pencils. I noticed it just now as linked on Drawn! and then realized I'd al...

Yet another Piano Man update.

From The Independent: He was, in fact, 20-year-old Andreas Grassl, a farmer's son from a small village on the German-Czech border. His f...

"Cleavage, erotic as it is, does not occur in nature."

In case you didn't read the NYT Style Magazine, here 's a link to the article about the hot topic: cleavage — and its dependence on ...

Closet editing.

Do you ever edit you clothes closet? Just take everything out of it and judge each item: throw out, give away, or put back in the closet? If...

Warning!

Are all the lawprofs Democrats?

Nearly all are, per Adam Liptak , writing in the NYT: [A] study, to be published this fall in The Georgetown Law Journal, analyzes 11 years ...

Not "Walking on Sunshine."

I guess we'll never think of Katrina and the Waves the same way again. Say a prayer for New Orleans : "This is a once in a lifetim...

Afraid to go out in your own $10 million yard?

Well, what do you expect ? You moved into the ecotone .

Hitchens on "The Daily Show" and in The Weekly Standard.

Did you see Christopher Hitchens on "The Daily Show" show this week? It was a rather strange little interview in which Jon Stewart...

The new TV season — do you care?

Throwing Things lists some things they care about. Here you can see which new shows Television Without Pity is going to recap. And, hey, t...

The Amsterdam Notebooks—Page 28.

It's Day 28 of this 35 day project . ( The set thus far. ) I'm still at the Stedelijkmuseum, where we saw that video installation ye...

Easy to dance to, easy to blog to.

How Madonna picked the songs for her new album: The tunes, with her distinctive vocals removed, were played in clubs from Liverpool to Ibiz...

"I think the piece isn't ghastly."

From the Boston Globe: A Connecticut artist plans to exhibit a sculpture of Boston Red Sox great Ted Williams' severed head at a New Yor...

Another face and some meandering about unreadable words.

Yesterday, we saw the Face on the Barroom Floor . Here's a face I saw today, stenciled on a curb. What does it say? ( Enlarge .) I'm...

"Schizophrenia is the price that homo sapiens pay for language."

Here 's the theory: People with these [pychoses] may hear their inner thoughts as external voices, or believe thoughts have been inserte...

A Madison truck.

From today's photowalk. ( Front view .)

Anti-marijuana, anti-science.

John Tierney blasts the Drug Enforcement Administration for standing in the way of research into the medicinal uses of marijuana. Currently...

About Roberts, "states' rights," and that toad.

Adam Cohen begins his NYT editorial this way: There could be a lot of talk about toads at the confirmation hearings for John Roberts Jr. In...

The Amsterdam Notebooks—Page 27.

It's Day 27 of this 35 day project . ( The set thus far. ) Yesterday, I felt deprived of language. Today, at the Stedelijkmuseum, I sudd...

Things I've resisted talking about.

I was thinking I'd been pretty tough resisting getting sucked into talking about Cindy Sheehan, but then I Googled my blog for her name ...

The face.

Here's the Face on the Barroom Floor : And here are all 100 photos from Colorado.

Evil kitty?

Yaaaaaggghhhh!

Another Piano Man update.

From The Independent: Andreas Grassl, 20, whose identity remained a mystery for four months after he was found on a beach in Sheerness, Kent...

"Red hair is smart, sexy comedy."

That's the opinion of Valerie Cherish, channeled by Lisa Kudrow, as told to WaPo fashion theorist Robin Givhan, who writes: All of [...

Historic underpants.

In the bedroom of the Thomas House museum (in Central City, Colorado): I took a picture of a 19th century man's underpants:

Central City, Colorado.

A gold-mining town, turned gambling town:

The term "the War Between the States."

Supreme Court nominee John Roberts used it in a draft of an article he wrote for President Reagan to be published in a scholarly journal: A...

M-ness.

If you've mastered yesterday's lesson and learned that you actually do need to wear pants, then let's move on to M-ness . (Via A...

"You either have an aid bonanza or you have nothing."

The unfortunate dynamics of hunger relief : Once an emergency is identified, [said Tony Vaux, a former official with Oxfam], the NGOs' p...

The Amsterdam Notebooks—Page 26.

It's Day 26 of this 35 day project . ( The set thus far. ) I'm in the museum, but passing the time by reading. If you're followi...

"Teen Beat" by Sandy Nelson.

Heard on the 50s channel on XM radio today. Wow! Rock Instrumental Classics. Perfect!

"Men are simply more intelligent than women."

I saw that was a headline in the Times of Oman and had a few outraged thoughts on my way to the link, then was surprised to find an articl...

Ferreting out the female fetus.

Doctors in Belgaum, India work around legal restrictions barring them from revealing the sex of a fetus. Expect to pay more to compensate t...

Design the new BlogAds logo and win $1000.

And tell them I sent you and cause me to win $300. That would be pretty nice.

Milk chocolate.

I love this kind. Feel free to take the position that some other brand is better, but it will be hard to convince me.

"How easy is it to fool the medical establishment into thinking that you are mentally ill, if you are not?"

We've debated this topic here before — a propos of the Piano Man — with me saying it would be hard to fool them and a commenter insisti...

Why the fixation on abdomens?

I've got two fashion posts today, so let me go with a third, which is already bulging out in the comments to the shorts post. Haven'...

Men in shorts?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's the short answer about shorts. Men in shorts? No such thing. If y...

"They make you feel taller and thinner and smarter and cooler, like your whole leg is one spring-loaded force."

Power boots are in . Should we credit Condi ?

"The U.S. has orchestrated a document that is organically Iraqi."

Quoting two experts who usually disagree about Iraq, David Brooks takes a positive view of the Iraqi Constitution. "The Bush administr...

"A remarkable spirit of compromise — and even enlightenment."

Taking a positive view of the Iraqi Constitution: Americans also shouldn't be too quick to conclude that anything that sounds odd or un...

The Beloit College Mindset List.

It's time, once again, for the Beloit College Mindset List of things about the world today's college freshmen have known — time for...

"He doesn't have a sexist bone in his body."

Said Linda Chavez about Supreme Court nominee John Roberts. She's one of the "Women for Roberts," who are trying to prevent ...

The Amsterdam Notebooks—Page 25.

It's Day 25 of this 35 day project . ( The set thus far. ) I'm in the Rijksmuseum. First, I draw some details from a nice "Temp...

Stevens admits what happened in Kelo is unwise.

Justice Stevens does the typical judicial thing of saying that he doesn't like the outcomes of the cases he decided. Re Kelo : In ... t...

About that "Six Feet Under" finale.

After driving 1000 miles yesterday, I sat down at midnight to watch the "Six Feet Under" finale (available on HBO on Demand). I...