WHAT SORT OF SAT SCORES DO THEY REQUIRE?:

National Curling Academy to open (BBC, 10/17/08)

A National Curling Academy is to be built in Kinross.

The decision was announced by the Board of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club, who had shortlisted sites in Kinross and Ratho for the project.

The new academy will feature a six sheet curling rink, with full supporting facilities, offices, meeting rooms and a museum.

The club said they aimed to have the new facility up and running in time for the 2010/2011 season.

HAVEN'T THE CUBAN PEOPLE SUFFERED ENOUGH...:

20bn barrel oil discovery puts Cuba in the big league (Rory Carroll, 10/18/08, The Guardian)

The government announced there may be more than 20bn barrels of recoverable oil in offshore fields in Cuba's share of the Gulf of Mexico, more than twice the previous estimate.

If confirmed, it puts Cuba's reserves on par with those of the US and into the world's top 20. Drilling is expected to start next year by Cuba's state oil company Cubapetroleo, or Cupet.

"It would change their whole equation. The government would have more money and no longer be dependent on foreign oil," said Kirby Jones, founder of the Washington-based US-Cuba Trade Association.

ANGLOSPHERE 1:

Anand floors Kramnik, takes lead (Rakesh Rao, 10/17/08, The Hindu)

Just when it seemed Vladimir Kramnik had managed to elude Viswanathan Anand’s grasp, the champion produced the knockout punch to floor the challenger in the third round of the World chess championship match here on Friday.

The time management of both players played a major role in the outcome of this complex match. At one stage, Anand had more than an hour of thinking time on his clock than Kramnik. But when the situation demanded, Anand took his time to thwart Kramnik’s bid to escape and later had less time than the Russian but just enough to finish the job.

Kramnik, in a hurry to complete 40 moves in the allotted two hours, missed a safe continuation and walked into serious trouble. Anand, closing in on a possible victory, kept his cool and found an easier way to win in 41 moves.

BUT WHEN DO I GET MY PONY? (via Kevin Whited):

The next New Deal (Brent Budowsky, 10/14/08, The Hill)

The Gilded Age of George Bush ends; the era of reform with Barack Obama begins. The great realignment is at hand, with prospects rising for a Democratic president and Congress with expanded majorities to initiate a new era of historic patriotic reform.

Let’s revive and revolutionize the auto industry with the next JFK moon shot to create a new generation of fuel-efficient cars that reach 100 miles per gallon or better within five years, and create a wave of new jobs to lift the economy and conserve historic energy.

Congress should return after the election, as the Speaker suggests, to enact a major economic stimulus of at least $150 billion, to give a booster shot to our domestic economy.

The Federal Reserve and global central banks should give the world economy a booster shot with another coordinated interest rate cut of 50-100 basis points. Now.

ONLY DISKMIEC:

Little Murders (Charles J. Chaput, Oct 18, 2008, Public Discourse)

I think the message of Render Unto Caesar can be condensed into a few basic points.

Here's the first point. For many years, studies have shown that Americans have a very poor sense of history, and that's very dangerous, because as Thucydides and Machiavelli and Thomas Jefferson have all said, history matters. It matters because the past shapes the present, and the present shapes the future. If American Catholics don't know history, and especially their own history as Catholics, then somebody else - and usually somebody not very friendly - will create their history for them.

Here's the second point. America is not a secular state. As historian Paul Johnson once said, America was ''born Protestant.'' It has uniquely and deeply religious roots. Obviously it has no established Church, and it has non-sectarian public institutions. It also has plenty of room for both believers and non-believers. But the United States was never intended to be a ''secular'' country in the radical modern sense. Nearly all the Founders were either Christian or at least religion-friendly. And all of our public institutions and all of our ideas about the human person are based in a religiously shaped vocabulary. So if we cut God out of our public life, we cut the foundation out from under our national ideals.

Here's the third point. We need to be very forceful in defending what the words in our political vocabulary really mean. Words are important because they shape our thinking, and our thinking drives our actions. When we subvert the meaning of words like ''the common good'' or ''conscience'' or ''community'' or ''family,'' we undermine the language that sustains our thinking about the law. Dishonest language leads to dishonest debate and bad laws.

Here's an example. We need to remember that tolerance is not a Christian virtue, and it's never an end in itself. In fact, tolerating grave evil within a society is itself a form of evil. Likewise, democratic pluralism does not mean that Catholics should be quiet in public about serious moral issues because of some misguided sense of good manners. A healthy democracy requires vigorous moral debate to survive. Real pluralism demands that people of strong beliefs will advance their convictions in the public square - peacefully, legally and respectfully, but energetically and without embarrassment. Anything less is bad citizenship and a form of theft from the public conversation.

Here's the fourth point. When Jesus tells the Pharisees and Herodians in the Gospel of Matthew (22:21) to ''render unto the Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's,'' he sets the framework for how we should think about religion and the state even today. Caesar does have rights. We owe civil authority our respect and appropriate obedience. But that obedience is limited by what belongs to God. Caesar is not God. Only God is God, and the state is subordinate and accountable to God for its treatment of human persons, all of whom were created by God. Our job as believers is to figure out what things belong to Caesar, and what things belong to God - and then to put those things in right order in our own lives, and in our relations with others.

So having said all this, what does the book mean, in practice, for each of us as individual Catholics? It means that we each have a duty to study and grow in our faith, guided by the teaching of the Church. It also means that we have a duty to be politically engaged. Why? Because politics is the exercise of power, and the use of power always has moral content and human consequences.

As Christians, we can't claim to love God and then ignore the needs of our neighbors. Loving God is like loving a spouse. A husband may tell his wife that he loves her, and of course that's very beautiful. But she'll still want to see the evidence in his actions. Likewise if we claim to be ''Catholic,'' we need to prove it by our behavior. And serving other people by working for justice and charity in our nation's political life is one of the very important ways we do that.

The ''separation of Church and state'' does not mean - and it can never mean - separating our Catholic faith from our public witness, our political choices and our political actions. That kind of separation would require Christians to deny who we are; to repudiate Jesus when he commands us to be ''leaven in the world'' and to ''make disciples of all nations.'' That kind of separation steals the moral content of a society. It's the equivalent of telling a married man that he can't act married in public. Of course, he can certainly do that, but he won't stay married for long.

Can a Catholic Support Him? Asking the Big Question about Barack Obama

I began work on Render Unto Caesar in July 2006. I made the final changes to the text in November 2007. That's a long time before anyone was nominated for president, and it was Doubleday, not I, that set the book's release date for August 2008. So - unlike Prof. Douglas Kmiec's recent book, Can a Catholic Support Him? Asking the Big Question about Barack Obama, which argues a Catholic case for Senator Obama - I wrote Render Unto Caesar with no interest in supporting or attacking any candidate or any political party.

The goal of Render Unto Caesar was simply to describe what an authentic Catholic approach to political life looks like, and then to encourage Americans Catholics to live it.

Prof. Kmiec has a strong record of service to the Church and the nation in his past. He served in the Reagan administration, and he supported Mitt Romney's campaign for president before switching in a very public way to Barack Obama earlier this year. In his own book he quotes from Render Unto Caesar at some length. In fact, he suggests that his reasoning and mine are ''not far distant on the moral inquiry necessary in the election of 2008.'' Unfortunately, he either misunderstands or misuses my words, and he couldn't be more mistaken.

I believe that Senator Obama, whatever his other talents, is the most committed ''abortion-rights'' presidential candidate of either major party since the Roe v. Wade abortion decision in 1973. Despite what Prof. Kmiec suggests, the party platform Senator Obama runs on this year is not only aggressively ''pro-choice;'' it has also removed any suggestion that killing an unborn child might be a regrettable thing. On the question of homicide against the unborn child - and let's remember that the great Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer explicitly called abortion ''murder'' - the Democratic platform that emerged from Denver in August 2008 is clearly anti-life.

Prof. Kmiec argues that there are defensible motives to support Senator Obama. Speaking for myself, I do not know any proportionate reason that could outweigh more than 40 million unborn children killed by abortion and the many millions of women deeply wounded by the loss and regret abortion creates.

To suggest - as some Catholics do - that Senator Obama is this year's ''real'' prolife candidate requires a peculiar kind of self-hypnosis, or moral confusion, or worse

REMEMBER HOW FORTHCOMING THE LAST DEMOCRAT WAS?:

Michelle and Me: The trials of being an Obama biographer (Liza Mundy, Oct. 14, 2008, Slate)

Back in June, the New York Times ran a front-page piece about Michelle Obama. A few months earlier, she had made her now-famous comment about how this election was the first time in her adult life that she'd been really proud of her country and become the target of a vast Internet conspiracy to portray her as anti-patriotic and full of racial animus. The Times piece was about the campaign's efforts to soften her image, and in it, Michelle expressed astonishment at the vitriol directed her way, venturing that anyone who spent time with her would know that's not what she is about. "I will walk anyone through my life," she declared.

As it happened, that very day I was in Chicago trying to get people to walk me through what they knew of her life, and the campaign was making it extremely difficult. Among the contacts I tried to make was Michelle's first cousin once removed Capers Funnye Jr., whose mother was the sister of Michelle's paternal grandfather. Funnye is a friendly man with his own story, a convert to Judaism who became a rabbi. I'd called earlier to ask him about the Robinson family history, and when he didn't call back, I'd driven to his Chicago synagogue. He opened the door and, when I told him who I was, looked regretful. He loves to talk, but he'd checked with the campaign, and they had asked him not to give an extended interview.

Around the same time, I called a pastor on Chicago's South Side who knew Michelle. "I was instructed by the campaign to let them know when you called me," he said, explaining that he received an advance message asking him not to discuss Michelle with any book author because they were "not ready for people who knew Michelle to talk about her."

Why should you care about one writer's shaggy-dog story? In one sense, none of this is tragic; every reporter knows that being denied access to the usual contacts means you dig harder and turn up new voices. But you should care if you are expecting an Obama presidency to achieve new levels of transparency. Obama, if elected, may well bring many changes to Washington, but unusually open access to the media—and, by extension, the public—is not necessarily going to be one of them.

OR YOU COULD JUST DUNK YOUR BANANA IN THE JAR:

Banana crepes with Nutella from Savannah in Burbank (Noelle Carter, 10/15/08, Los Angeles Times)

Crepes

3/4 cup plus 1 1/2 teaspoons milk

1/3 cup flour

2 eggs

1 tablespoon melted butter, plus extra for greasing the crepe pan

1/4 teaspoon salt

1. Combine the milk, flour, eggs and butter in a blender and process until smooth. Strain the batter into a nonreactive container, cover tightly and refrigerate overnight.

2. Heat a crepe pan or medium nonstick skillet over medium heat. Lightly grease the pan with a little butter, then pour in one-fourth cup batter, tilting the pan so that the batter forms a roughly 7-inch-diameter circle. Cook until the crepe is just set on the bottom, about 1 1/2 minutes, then flip and cook until set on the other side, about 1 minute more. Adjust the heat as necessary so the crepes do not color too much or cook too quickly. Store the cooked crepes between layers of parchment or waxed paper. The batter makes 8 crepes.

Foster sauce
1/2 cup dark brown sugar

6 tablespoons cold butter, diced in 1/2 -inch pieces

2 1/2 tablespoons light corn syrup

2 1/2 tablespoons brandy

2 tablespoons creme de banana

In a small, heavy-bottom pan, combine the sugar, butter and corn syrup. Place the pan over medium heat, melting the sugar and butter and bringing the contents to a low simmer. Remove the pan from the heat and add the brandy and creme de banana. Place the pan over medium-high heat and cook 1 to 2 minutes to combine the flavors. Reserve and keep warm.

Assembly
4 bananas, halved lengthwise, then crosswise, divided

8 teaspoons coarse or sanding sugar, divided

8 prepared crepes

1 cup Nutella, divided

1 cup warm Foster sauce, divided

2 cups vanilla ice cream

4 mint sprigs for garnish

4 teaspoons powdered sugar for garnish

20 to 24 raspberries for garnish

1. Place the banana quarters on a pie tin or baking sheet cut-side up. Sprinkle the sugar evenly over the bananas and brulee with the blow torch just until the sugar is caramelized. Reserve.

2. Heat the oven to 200 degrees. Spread 1 tablespoon of Nutella over half of each crepe, then fold in half and spread an additional tablespoon of Nutella over the folded crepe. Fold the crepe once more to form a triangle. Repeat with the remaining crepes. Place 2 crepes on each of 4 heat-proof serving plates, or onto a parchment-lined baking sheet, and heat in the oven just until the crepes are warm and the Nutella is soft and creamy. Remove the plates (or remove the crepes, 2 each, to the serving plates) and spoon one-fourth cup of the warm Foster sauce over each serving.

3. Garnish each serving with 4 pieces of caramelized banana. Place a scoop of ice cream in the center of each plate and scatter the raspberries evenly over the servings. Garnish each with a mint sprig and a light sprinkling of powdered sugar. Serve immediately.

WHOOPS, NEVERMIND...:

Secret Service says "Kill him" allegation unfounded (Andrew M. Seder, 10/15/08, timesleader.com)

The agent in charge of the Secret Service field office in Scranton said allegations that someone yelled “kill him” when presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s name was mentioned during Tuesday’s Sarah Palin rally are unfounded.

THE FRANCHISE IS A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE:

The Barack backlash (Patrick J. Buchanan, 10/17/08, World Net Daily)

America may desperately desire to close the book on the Bush presidency. Yet there is, as of now, no hard evidence it has embraced Obama, his ideology, or agenda. Indeed, his campaign testifies, by its policy shifts, that it is fully aware the nation is still resisting the idea of an Obama presidency.

In the later primaries, even as a panicked media were demanding that Hillary drop out of the race, she consistently routed Obama in Ohio and Pennsylvania and crushed him in West Virginia and Kentucky.

By April and May, the Democratic Party was manifesting all the symptoms of buyer's remorse over how it had voted in January and February.

Obama's convention put him eight points up. But, as soon as America heard Sarah Palin in St. Paul, the Republicans shot up 10 points and seemed headed for victory.

What brought about the Obama-Biden resurgence was nothing Obama and Biden did, but the mid-September crash of Fannie, Freddie, Lehman Brothers, AIG, the stock market, where $4 trillion was wiped out, the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street that enraged Middle America – and John McCain's classically inept handling of the crisis.

In short, Obama has still not closed the sale. Every time America takes a second look at him, it has second thoughts, and backs away.

Republican Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann (Minn.) accused Barack Obama Friday of holding “anti-American” sentiments.

“I'm very concerned that he may have anti-American views,” Bachmann said on MSNBC’s Hardball. “That's what the American people are concerned about. That’s why they want to know what his answers are.”

“In his book, Barack Obama had pointed to Jeremiah Wright as one of his mentors and also Father Pfleger as one of his mentors. Two of the three mentors are Father Pfleger and Jeremiah Wright. Now, these are very strange, anti-American mentors,” Bachmann continued.

“Barack Obama has been associating with anti-Americans, by and large -- the people who are radical leftists. That's the real question about Barack Obama.”

I JUST KNOW THAT THIS TIME THE NON-VOTERS WILL VOTE!:

Some Surveys Indicate Tighter Presidential Race: Differences in Predicting Outcome Result From How Pollsters Gauge Voter Turnout and Weight Party Affiliation (NICK TIMIRAOS, 10/17/08, Wall Street Journal)

Differences over how to accurately gauge party affiliation also help account for the discrepancies. Some pollsters argue polls should be statistically "weighted" so that their results achieve a partisan composition that reflects long-term national averages -- particularly if a poll shows that one party gets an unusually large share among the respondents, compared with past elections.

Pollster Scott Rasmussen, for example, weights current polls so that Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 39.3% to 33% margin, while pollster John Zogby adjusts polls so that Democrats account for around 38% of the electorate and Republicans, 36%. So even if a particular sample of calls shows different ratios, the pollsters adjust to fit that formula.

"What troubles me is when I see some of my colleagues have 27% of the respondents that are Republicans. That's just not America, period," says Mr. Zogby, whose polls have shown Sen. Obama with a lead ranging from two to six points this month. He argues that while party affiliation fluctuates over time, it doesn't change "day-to-day, and it never fluctuates by eight points in a short time period."

Other pollsters argue that polls should use whatever partisan mix results from a particular survey rather than arbitrarily establishing party affiliation weights. "How do you know that's right? I mean, they're making up numbers," says Susan Pinkus, who conducts the Los Angeles Times-Bloomberg poll, which isn't weighted. In this week's poll, the respondents were 34% Democratic and 26% Republican.

MEANWHILE...:

Iran's Economy Runs Out Of Steam (Michael Rubin 10.17.08, Forbes)

Non-oil sector production is stagnant. Factories may remain open but many do not pay workers. On Oct. 2, for example, tire factory workers staged a protest in front of the Ministry of Labor seeking six months' unpaid wages. In recent weeks, wild cat strikes have occurred in Tehran, Isfahan, Qazvin and Sanandaj. Purchasing power has plummeted.

To mitigate such trends, the government has imposed price controls. On June 11, the daily Resalat reported that the paramilitary Basij, a subdivision of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, would enforce low prices. Over subsequent days, the Iranian press featured photos of Basij beating merchants whose prices were too high.

The combination of high liquidity, sparked by Ahmadinejad's arbitrary decree lowering interest rates to single digits, no-interest banking and inflation has led wealthy Iranians to pour money into real estate. Housing costs have skyrocketed; Tehran real estate prices rival New York's. The average Iranian family now pays 60% of its income for rent, while the Ministry of Housing estimates 1.5 million Iranians are homeless.

To fight economic malaise, Ahmadinejad has raided Iran's foreign reserves. In the past two months alone, Iranian papers have reported more than $15 billion in withdrawals from the reserves to import refined gas and several additional billion dollars to subsidize industrial schemes. Ahmadinejad's reinstatement of subsidies has meant Iran once again must import 40% of its refined petroleum needs.

He will need to continue spending. Last winter, Iran ran out of gas. Food prices more than doubled and the Revolutionary Guards had to deploy on the streets of towns and cities to keep order. On Oct. 1, the Parliament's Energy Commission predicted another "severe gas shortage" again within months.

The prospect of sharply lower prices for oil and other commodity exports -- on top of plunging stock markets and a seized-up financial system -- threatens the economic recovery that's been a foundation of Vladimir Putin's rule in Russia.

Falling prices for crude oil played a role in driving down Russia's benchmark RTS stock index 20% this week to the lowest level since June 2005.

Despite a $160 billion Kremlin bailout package, the market is off 73% from its record high set in May, and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin warned legislators Friday that the declines are likely to continue. Unable to raise cash, Russia's heavily indebted billionaires have been forced to give up prime assets pledged as collateral or beg for bailouts.

Economists have cut forecasts for growth next year to around 3%-4%, down from a 7.7% rate in the first nine months of this year. Central bank reserves have fallen $66.9 billion since early August as investors and ordinary Russians have fled the ruble.

WE'RE WALKING STEM CELL FARMS:

Stem Cell Breakthrough: Mass-Production Of 'Embryonic' Stem Cells From A Human Hair (ScienceDaily, Oct. 17, 2008)

The first reports of the successful reprogramming of adult human cells back into so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which by all appearances looked and acted liked embryonic stem cells created a media stir. But the process was woefully inefficient: Only one out of 10,000 cells could be persuaded to turn back the clock.

Now, a team of researchers led by Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, succeeded in boosting the reprogramming efficiency more than 100fold, while cutting the time it takes in half. In fact, they repeatedly generated iPS cells from the tiny number of keratinocytes attached to a single hair plucked from a human scalp.

Their method, published ahead of print in the Oct. 17, 2008 online edition of Nature Biotechnology, not only provides a practical and simple alternative for the generation of patient- and disease-specific stem cells, which had been hampered by the low efficiency of the reprogramming process, but also spares patients invasive procedures to collect suitable starting material, since the process only requires a single human hair.

THE WEATHER IS HERE (via Glenn Dryfoos):

Buy American. I Am. (WARREN E. BUFFETT, 10/17/08, NY Times)

Omaha

THE financial world is a mess, both in the United States and abroad. Its problems, moreover, have been leaking into the general economy, and the leaks are now turning into a gusher. In the near term, unemployment will rise, business activity will falter and headlines will continue to be scary.

So ... I’ve been buying American stocks. This is my personal account I’m talking about, in which I previously owned nothing but United States government bonds. (This description leaves aside my Berkshire Hathaway holdings, which are all committed to philanthropy.) If prices keep looking attractive, my non-Berkshire net worth will soon be 100 percent in United States equities.

Why?

A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. [...]

Over the long term, the stock market news will be good. In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.

You might think it would have been impossible for an investor to lose money during a century marked by such an extraordinary gain. But some investors did. The hapless ones bought stocks only when they felt comfort in doing so and then proceeded to sell when the headlines made them queasy.

Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value.

NICE WORK, TANCRETINS:

Protestant Latinos favor Obama, poll says: Republican immigration policies have tilted them toward the Democrat, the study says. (Nicole Gaouette, 10/17/08, Los Angeles Times)

Protestant Latinos, a growing group of voters who were key supporters of President Bush in 2004, have shifted their backing to Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, driven in large part by anger toward Republican immigration policies, according to a poll released Thursday.

Latinos overall represent about 6% of U.S. voters. Protestant Latinos -- about a third of all Latinos -- heavily supported Bush's reelection. This year, however, just over half of these voters support Obama for president; a third said they would vote for Republican Sen. John McCain.

More than 80% of Protestant Latinos, who tend to identify themselves as evangelicals, said the candidates' positions on immigration would be central to their vote this year, according to the survey.

HE'S AN AWFULLY GOOD BALLPLAYER...:

Unbelievable (Joe Posnanski, 10/17/08)

That was unbelievable. That’s all. I just watched the Red Sox come back from 7-0 in the final innings of an elimination playoff game. And I never saw anything quite like it. Yes, the Red Sox have had all those incredible moments, of course. Came back from three games down against the Yankees. Came back from three to one against the Tribe. But this was different, this was ridiculous … you know what this was like? This was like something out of a kid’s dream. Do you remember being a kid and concocting these fantastic scenarios when your team was losing, these preposterous comebacks that boggled logic and the space-time continuum. I can remember, clear as Fiji Water, watching the Cleveland Browns trailing by 17 in the fourth quarter and thinking, “OK, if they score a touchdown here, onside kick, get it, score another touchdown, onside kick again, get the ball again, then all they would need is a field goal.”

So it was on a Thursday in Boston.

If they can just get a two-out, two-strike RBI single from Pedroia …

And if they can get a three-run homer from Papi …

And if they can get a two-run home from J.D. Drew …

And if they can get a 254-pitch at-bat from Coco Crisp and then, with a runner at second, let him hit a hard single to Tampa outfielder Gabe Gross who then uncorks the worst playoff outfield throw since Barry …

WHICH IS WHAT BROUGHT THE FLATLANDERS HERE:

NH Congressional candidates call for lower taxes (BETH LaMONTAGNE HALL, 10/17/08, Associated Press)

Democratic Rep. Carol Shea-Porter and her Republican challenger Jeb Bradley agreed on one thing during their debate Thursday night: taxes should be lower.

What they couldn't agree on is who should get the tax breaks.

Shea-Porter pushed for more middle class tax cuts and further oversight of the banking industry to help boost the economy. Bradley also pushed for lower taxes, but called for lower spending and reducing the federal deficit as well.

AT LEAST THE UNICORN RIDER IS TOO INEXPERIENCED TO HAVE WEIGHED IN ON THE COLD WAR...

The Case for John McCain: An argument for why McCain should be president--and Obama should not. (Yuval Levin, October 16, 2008, Culture 11)

In a year that favors them in almost every possible respect, the Democrats have chosen to put before the country the most liberal and least experienced candidate they have ever run for the presidency. Barack Obama’s personal record of accomplishment consists of essentially nothing of any relevance to the job he is seeking: no executive experience, no foreign policy experience, no military experience, and a very short time on the national political scene in which his only real achievement has been the most liberal voting record in a very liberal Senate.

On foreign policy, Obama has exhibited careless poor judgment — parroting the generic Democratic line, whatever it is at any particular moment, and in moments of doubt resorting to an instinctive cosmopolitan internationalism. On Iraq, he was against action when everyone (including Obama himself) believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction; then after it had become apparent he did not and that things were going poorly Obama said “there’s not that much difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage.” Then when presented with a surge strategy to turn things around, he rejected it in favor of withdrawal in defeat; and even now when the surge has been working he refuses to acknowledge he was wrong to oppose it. He has somehow managed to be wrong at every stage.

THE LEFT VS NATURE:

Lego ad red lighted over shades of pink and blue (The Local, 17 Oct 08)

A Swedish advertising watchdog has slammed Danish toymaker Lego for a catalogue it claims promotes outdated gender roles.

Sweden’s Trade Ethical Council against Sexism in Advertising (ERK) singled out images in a recent Lego catalog which featured a little girl playing in a pink room with ponies, a princess, and a palace accompanied by a caption reading, “Everything a princess could wish for…”

On the opposite side of the page, a little boy can be seen in a blue room playing with a fire station, fire trucks, a police station, and an airplane. The caption beneath reads, “Tons of blocks for slightly older boys.”

NOT EVEN HALF BAKED:

Obama's lead falls two points in new CNN Poll of Polls (Paul Steinhauser, 10/17/08, CNN POlitcal Ticker)

A new average of the most recent national polls suggests Sen. Barack Obama holds a 6-point lead over Sen. John McCain.

The CNN Poll of Polls, compiled Friday morning, indicates that 49 percent of Americans say Obama, D-Illinois, is their choice for president, with 43 percent backing McCain, R-Arizona. Eight percent of those questioned are undecided.

OH, THOSE NAZI ROHMEOS:

Road-death politician got drunk in a gay bar hours before car crash... and may have been targeted by saboteurs (Daily Mail, 17th October 2008)

It has also been revealed that on the day of his death, Haider spent part of his last night drinking in a gay club called ‘Stadtkraemer.’

THE MOUNTIE JUST GETS DREAMIER:

Paul Gross deserves our support (National Post Editorial Board, October 16, 2008)

As Paul Gross's Great War movie Passchendaele prepares for its general release in Canada this weekend, it is time for us to set aside debates over public arts funding for a moment and think about supporting an ambitious, courageous, all-Canadian project with our own consumer dollars. [...]

Ultimately, if we have a legitimate interest in the existence of a financially comfortable domestic film industry we can always use another proof-of-concept that a (relatively) big-budget Canadian movie with a Canadian story can attract audiences inside and outside Canada.

In the meantime, it is already worth celebrating the other admirable feature of Mr. Gross's approach: his commitment to a genuine Canadian history that reaches back beyond the Trudeauvian Year Zero.

Although he used active Canadian soldiers as extras, the actor-director shied away from professing one view or the other on the war in Afghanistan. (The screenwriting, he points out, began while the country was still Soviet-occupied, and pre-production started before 9/11.) But he does think it is important to reject the idea that taking sides in war is an unnatural or novel role for Canadians.

"When we view ourselves exclusively as peacekeepers," Mr. Gross told the CBC this week, "we ought to understand that, yes, we're extraordinarily good at that - to some extent, we invented the concept - but that's relatively recent in our history. We also are warriors, and we were particularly good at it in the First World War and the Second World War."

He added: "How do you know where you're going if you don't know where it is you come from?"

WHERE DOWN 3-1 IS NO DIFFERENT THAN UP 3-0:

The champs recover magic of Octobers past (Dan Shaughnessy, October 17, 2008, Boston Globe)

It was over. We were getting ready to lower the storm windows and put baseball to bed for the long New England winter.

And then the reeling Red Sox dug down and found the lost magic of recent Octobers. They recovered from a 7-0, seventh-inning deficit to stun the Tampa Bay Rays, 8-7, in the fifth game of the American League Championship Series. It was as wild, wacky, and wonderful as anything that's happened at Fenway Park in this century. Which is saying a lot.

In the proud tradition of the Cowboy Uppers, Idiots, gypsies, tramps, and thieves who carried this team to a couple of world championships, the 2008 Sox staved off elimination with one of the great comebacks of October lore.

The Sox won in the ninth at 12:16 this morning when J.D. Drew roped a single over the head of Rays right fielder Gabe Gross with two on and two outs. It was the 11th walkoff win in Red Sox postseason history: The first in which the Sox trailed by seven runs in the seventh.

"I've never seen a group so happy to get on a plane at 1:30 in the morning," said Sox manager Terry Francona.

THERE IS NO MORE RELIABLE ELECTORAL INDICATOR IN PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS...:

Palin appeals to American's anti-intellectualism (Brendon O'Connor, 17 October 2008, Online Opinion)

Foreign distaste for American populism is nothing new and Palin fits a well established set of tropes and stereotypes. This perhaps explains why opinions on Palin have already crystallised even though she has been in the spotlight for only a short time. Drawing on these tropes and stereotypes, people have made a snap decision about what Palin symbolises.

It has been claimed that Europeans didn’t discover America, rather they invented it. It is hard to deny that mythology has played an especially important role in American society and politics. The myths of the first explorers and pilgrims were largely positive with America portrayed as the Golden Land, the New Jerusalem, the endless frontier, the big rock candy mountain. However, soon a series of negative images emerged of Americans as hypocritical, ignorant, money grubbing and uncouth.

Many of these negative views were first propagated by European travellers who visited the American frontier in the 1820s and 1830s and commented disapprovingly on the boorishness and electoral populism they encountered. In the campaigns of the 1820s a former military commander of Scots-Irish stock, Andrew Jackson, was pitted against the establishment figure of John Quincy Adams. Old Hickory as Jackson was fondly called assailed the eloquent Adams for his love of learning and Latin, for being effete, and for being too European in his tastes.

Of course this all sounds familiar: Bush said he knew he would win the 2000 election when he read in a New Yorker magazine profile that Gore said he enjoyed reading the French philosopher Merleau-Ponty. In 2004 John Kerry’s ability to speak French and his wife’s expensive “European” tastes were said to be a distinct electoral weakness, and in 2008 we have another feisty Scots-Irish former military man assailing a Harvard educated silver tongue for his lack of real world experience.

To counter this anti-intellectualism politicians often try to hide their learning. This was one of Bill Clinton’s talents and something he long understood. Apparently Clinton seriously considered choosing the University of Arkansas over the far superior Yale to study law in the early 1970s because he worried an East Coast education would mark him for life (just as he worried that as a 22-year-old draft-dodging would make him unelectable).

AWESOME!:

'Chuck's enjoyable spy-guy adventures are worth a look (Maureen Ryan, 10/05/08, Chicago Tribune)

Sometimes all you want from TV is for it to bring a smile to your face. If that’s what you’re after, you should be watching the delightful "Chuck".

This show, which debuted last fall and was relaunched Sept. 29, is a zingy spy caper that contains all the savvy humor and pop-culture references you’d expect from Josh Schwartz, the man behind the hit soaps “Gossip Girl” and “The O.C.”

After some first-season growing pains – and the interruption of the writers’ strike – “Chuck” has returned more focused than ever on its many strengths: The show’s versatile ensemble cast, the unrequited romance between would-be spy Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi) and CIA agent Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski), and the frequently hilarious antics of Chuck’s co-workers at the Buy More electronics store.

IF THESE GUYS WERE DOING THEIR JOBS...:

As Manhattan Project's Cast Reconvenes, Terrible Beauty Takes the Stage at the Met (ROBERT LEE HOTZ, 10/17/08, Wall Street Journal)

Arias of the Bomb triggered a chain reaction of science and national memory this week, through a new staging of "Doctor Atomic" at New York's Metropolitan Opera, telling how young men and women in the urgency of war first kindled atomic fire from the tinder of physics.

The opera is scored by John Adams, who was inspired by the creation of the world's first atomic weapon during the Manhattan Project and its leader, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. Few other achievements of 20th-century science lend themselves so readily to the high drama of opera as the haunting history of scientists atop an isolated New Mexico mesa driven in secrecy by ambition and fear to unleash the atom's destructive power.

The new production, which opened Monday and will be broadcast in 30 countries next month, has prompted a scholarly retrospective on the Manhattan Project at the City University of New York. Many of the project's surviving physicists are convening there today, perhaps for the last time, at a moment when an estimated 11,000 or so nuclear weapons are deployed among at least seven nations world-wide and diplomats are trying to limit the spread of nuclear technology in North Korea and Iran. The U.S. itself is poised to resume warhead production for the first time in two decades.

"We are at real risk now," says Nobel laureate Norman Ramsey, 94 years old. As head of the Manhattan Project's Delivery Group, the Harvard University physicist developed the means to drop the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Indeed, researchers are still struggling to grasp all the destructive effects of the force that these scientists distilled from fractured bonds of matter. [...]

Using advanced climate models developed by NASA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the scientists calculated the consequences of a regional conflict in which each side might attack with 50 nuclear weapons, compared with the thousands of warheads that could be launched by a nuclear superpower. Millions of tons of soot from burning cities would be lofted higher into the atmosphere than previously believed, drop temperatures world-wide to levels not seen for a thousand years and strip much of the atmosphere's protective layer of ozone, researchers at the University of Colorado and Rutgers University reported.