"An algorithm must be seen to be believed."- D.E.Knuth

One of the Benefits AquaMinds' NoteTaker is that you can make endless notebooks of links from web pages you like. One of the curses of AquaMinds' NoteTaker is that those of us interested in the Structuring of a Linkblog can inflict these stacks of notes on our readers. Here's my stack from today.

Tentacles, Suckers and Slime, Oh My!: New Zealand Sea Creature: Basking Shark or Plesiosaur? -- or simply a chance for an extremely large portion of deep-friend calimari?

Testosterone Moments: Learn the truth about the Ferrari Enzo and compare it to the truth about the Dodge Ram SRT-10 at Robert Farago's "The Truth About Cars," home of the best hands-on automobile reviews on the web.

Won't Get Fooled Again: If you've ever been a victim of the many "Crimes of Persuasion" such as Schemes, Scams, Fraud ( investment fraud, consumer rip-offs, senior scams, telemarketing fraud, pyramid schemes, elderly victims, internet email scams, Nigerian fraud, swindles, shonks ). this site will probably have your number.

Saint Typo is Ours. Who is yours? Choose one or more of The Six Patron Saints of Graphic Design

Buddhism and Christianity come together in this classic Zen Koan. "Koan" -- as in One Hand Clapping.

Two, Two, Two Things Are One: The high concept here is that all you need to know about anything can essentially be known if you know The Two Things that are essential to know.

Get a Whole New Look Out of That Old Black Tee-Shirt: "I'll be your Ninja tonight!"

Now That You've Given Up Cigars you are probably wondering what to do with that very expensive humidor you got just before the IPO in 1999. Wonder no more becausemini-itx.com is "at your server" [sic]. And if you happen to come across an old Underwood Typewriter here's your chance to get many more years of functionality out of it.

Photographs Worth Checking Out include AK47's Boxing Boys and Suburban Dreams as well as Barbara Coles's work made by bringing togther a model, diaphenous clothing, a swimming pool and a Polaroid.

Our Number One Pick for Dumb Comic Book Covers is over on the side bar. But there are still eleven choices left right here.

Dead Last on Our Amazon Wish List would have to be The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping.

Remember Those Revell Airplane Models you were so proud of putting together when you were a kid? One look at Young Park's aluminum airplane models and you'll be glad you blew them up with cherry bombs and airplane glue.

Help for Psychotic Closets is at Hand via Barbra Horowitz's "closet therapy." She's located in, of course, the one place where people have more money and closets than time -- Los Angeles. Her method: "edit, purge, style." We're not sure what goes on during the "purge" phase.

We Could Go On, but we're becoming nervous about the whining and grinding noise that keeps coming out of our newly acquired : SimpleTech Hard Drive . Perhaps backing thing up in odd numbered years isn't really that good a plan. Then again, we bought this drive for BackUps. Not thinking we'd need to backup the backup.

On the other hand, a major hard-disk failure would be strangely liberating. It would give us more time to pursue our new sport of choice: "monkeyfishing " "n. to catch fish by charging water with an electric current then netting the stunned or panicked fish which rise to the surface." There's a very old and very bad joke associated with this, but we will spare you.

For now.

TWO VIEWS FROM 2004 AND 1655:

Saturn as seen by Cassini

"As Cassini coasts into the final month of its nearly seven-year trek, the serene majesty of its destination looms ahead. The spacecraft's cameras are functioning beautifully and continue to return stunning views from Cassini's position, 1.2 billion kilometers (750 million miles) from Earth and now 15.7 million kilometers (9.8 million miles) from Saturn."

Saturn as seen by Galileo

"Galileo Galilei. Il Saggiatore nel quale con bilancia esquisita, e giusta siponderano le cose contenuto nella libra astronimica, e filosoficadi Lotario Sarsi Sigensano, scritto in forma di lettera, all%u2019 illustrissimo, e reuerendissimo Monsig. D. Virginio Cesarini Accademico Linceo, maestro di camera di n.s. dal signor Galileo Galilei . . . Bologna : Per gli H. H. del Dozza, 1655."

HANSON HINTS THAT AMERICA WILL REQUIRE A GREATER SACRIFICE THAN 9-11 to wake up in: Feeding the Minotaur --Our strange relationship with the terrorists continues.

Nearly three years after 9/11 we are in the strangest of all paradoxes: a war against fascists that we can easily win but are clearly not ready to fully wage. We have the best 500,000 soldiers in the history of civilization, a resolute president, and an informed citizenry that has already received a terrible preemptive blow that killed thousands.

Yet what a human comedy it has now all become.

The billionaire capitalist George Soros -- who grew fabulously wealthy through cold and calculating currency speculation, helping to break many a bank and its poor depositors -- now makes the moral equation between 9/11 and Abu Ghraib. For this ethicist and meticulous accountant, 3,000 murdered in a time of peace are the same as some prisoners abused by renegade soldiers in a time of war.

Recently in the New York Times I read two articles about the supposedly new irrational insensitivity toward Muslims and saw an ad for a book detailing how the West "constructed" and exaggerated the Islamic menace %u2014 even as the same paper ran a quieter story about a state-sponsored cleric in Saudi Arabia's carefully expounding on the conditions under which Muslims can desecrate the bodies of murdered infidels.

Aristocratic and very wealthy Democrats -- Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, and John Kerry -- employ the language of conspiracy to assure us that we had no reason to fight Saddam Hussein. "Lies," "worst," and " betrayed" are the vocabulary of their daily attacks. A jester in stripes like Michael Moore, who cannot tell the truth, is now an artistic icon -- precisely and only because of his own hatred of the president and the inconvenient idea that we are really at war. Our diplomats court the Arab League, which snores when Russians and Sudanese kill hundreds of thousands of Muslims but shrieks when we remove those who kill even more of their own. And a depopulating, entitlement-expanding Europe believes an American president, not bin Laden, is the greatest threat to world peace. Russia, the slayer of tens of thousands of Muslim Chechans and a big-time profiteer from Baathist loot, lectures the United States on its insensitivity to the new democracy in Baghdad.

Meanwhile, in Europe, Iraq, and the rest of the Middle East, we see the same old bloodcurdling threats, the horrific videos, the bombings, the obligatory pause, the faux negotiations, the lies %u2014 and then, of course, the bloodcurdling threats, the horrific videos, the bombings...

No, bin Laden is quite sane -- but lately I have grown more worried that we are not.

Pointer from: The Countertop Chronicles

SPINSANITY HAS A FISH, BARREL, BANG MOMENT with Slate's Bushisms and the new, cynical, Kerryisms features today. But for all the truth in the item, there's zero chance that the Slatoids involved will back-off. There's simply too much prestige and extra pocket change lurking in the spin-offs from these features to dissuade these two journalistic insects "professionals" from their daily gnaw at the country.

It doesn't matter that they are wrong, and have been shown consistently to be wrong over the years, what matters is that they are part of the "knowledge worker" elite side of the Elite Civil War admirably sketched out today by David Brooks at the Times in : Bitter at the Top:

[E]very society has two aristocracies. The members of the aristocracy of mind produce ideas, and pass along knowledge. The members of the aristocracy of money produce products and manage organizations. In our society these two groups happen to be engaged in a bitter conflict about everything from S.U.V.'s to presidents. You can't understand the current bitter political polarization without appreciating how it is inflamed or even driven by the civil war within the educated class.

Slate's Saletan and Weisberg are members of the first group and don't care if they are right, they just want to win points from their peers. And, of course, they also want the deep cover of "Objectivity and Fairness" while they are at it. That's the primary reason for floating the Kerryism feature; not to make fun of Kerry -- how funny can this man be, really? -- but to provide deniability for the long-running mockery of Bush that has been letting Saletan and Weisberg dine out on plaudits from his pals and advances from book publishers.

Like the applause for the endless and ever growing falsehoods of Michael Moore, truth is not the issue here. The issue is simply, "Can this misquotation

Continued...

THE APT HEADLINE FROM THE AP READS: Court Allows 'Under God' on Technicality, but it is obvious that this will not stand and we will be back in this endless loop as quickly as suits can be filed.

I suggest we just cut to the chase and save everyone the hassle. Let's just have God give up. That's right, He should just give up on this whole sorry nation that feels, at this point in history, compelled to indulge it's fat and overfed legal eagles with debates such as this. Instead, we can simply insitute a new pledge that will give the haters of God what they really desire: A pledge that means so little that it means, well, everything.

After all, removing God from the Pledge is only the first step to getting rid of the Pledge altogether.

When this sad and mindless issue took over the courts of this country last year, I suggested the following Way-New Pledge. I put it to you again:
==

Just in case they decide that God has no little desk in the classrooms of America any longer, here's a new version of The Pledge of Maybe that we published last July:
To: The Central Committee to Make America Nice Instead of Evil
From: Newspeak Central
Re: The Way Cool New Pledge

Dudes,Dudettes, and Others Between Genders,

At your command Newspeak Central has reviewed the "old and in the way" Pledge of Allegiance. After six months of multicultural diversity focus groups this is the new one. We hope you give us hugs for it.

Original Bad Pledge:
"I pledge allegiance to the Flag
of the United States of America,
and to the Republic for which it stands:
one Nation under God, indivisible,
With Liberty and Justice for all.

Stinky, right? Who can say that with a straight face? Nobody cool, that's for sure. (Our new version is something MTV could make a video of once Justin Timberlake records it.)

Here's our edit and our thinking:
"I " [ Too narcissistic -- Alter to "One may or may not"]

"pledge" [ Too binding, implies a commitment to something no matter what may happen to it -- Alter to "hereby loan on a revocable basis"]

"allegiance" [Just far too antiquated a notion for today's fast time. Change to: "a smidgen of one's attention"]

"to the Flag" [ The Flag? You've got to be kidding. No symbols drenched in blood, betrayal, slavery, corporate greed, unbridled lust of global domination allowed. Let's change it to "to the rainbow of diversity"]

"of the United States of America," [ No way! We are not really citizens of the USA. We're citizens of the, dare we say it? United Cool Nations! Strike and replace with "of the United Cool Places of One World of Really Well Meaning Persons" "Nations" had to go. See below.]

"and to the Republic" [Scratch that. It was the Republican form of government that got Bush elected. The Republic is so over. We'll go for Direct Democracy where we all vote on

Continued...

Seen at: Church Signs

Click to enlarge

Letter from Fidel Castro, as a young student, to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1940

"If you like, give me a ten dollars bill american, in the letter, because never, I have not seen a ten dollars bill green american and I would like to have one of them.

My address is:
Sr. Fidel Castro
Colegio de Delores
Santiago de Cuba
Oriente Cuba"

Former U.S. President George H.W. Bush comes in for a landing after performing a tandem parachute jump with Army Golden Knight Sgt. Bryan Schnell, on the grounds of the Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas June 13, 2004. It was the second of two tandem jumps Bush made on Sunday to celebrate his 80th birthday

-- Yahoo! News

The essential paradigm of cyberspace is creating partially situated identities out of actual or potential social reality in terms of canonical forms of human contact, thus renormalizing the phenomenology of narrative space and requiring the naturalization of the intersubjective cognitive strategy, and thereby resolving the dialectics of metaphorical thoughts, each problematic to the other, collectively redefining and reifying the paradigm of the parable of the model of the metaphor.

-- Chip Morningstar , How to Deconstruct Almost Anything

The Curmudgeon and his "Snapper"

WHAT MAKES AMERICA GREAT? Aside from the big things which we argue about endlessly, it strikes me the country's greatness is more often seen in the aggregate of little things. We each have our list, but for Francis W. Porretto today it seems to be cup holders on lawn tractors. He's got a point.

Your Curmudgeon recently found himself "in the chips" sufficiently to indulge in a new lawn tractor. His old Snapper tractor isn't that old -- nine years -- but it's been losing power, which has made cutting his acre of grass more irritating than it ought to be, especially in the spring fast-growth season. Also, it vibrates enough that an hour on it leaves unpleasant after-effects on your Curmudgeon's balance, hearing, vision and grip. So a few weeks ago, he sallied forth and purchased a new unit: a 22 horsepower Cub Cadet 1022, with a 46 inch mower deck.

Cub has been spoken of as the Cadillac of consumer grade lawn tractors. After a couple of weeks of using this one, it's easy to see why. The frame absorbs nearly all the vibration produced by the engine, transmission and mower blades. The overall design is elegant; everything is easily accessible, both for use and for maintenance. The 22 horsepower Briggs & Stratton engine is equal to any need a noncommercial user might face. The wide deck has reduced the cutting time here at the Fortress of Crankitude from an hour and a half to about forty-five minutes. Last but not least, the lawn looks better, which might just be about the sharpness of new blades, though your Curmudgeon thinks not.

But let us not pass over the feature that has the C. S. O. hypnotized: the cup holder.

Cars have had cup holders for half of forever, but lawn tractors? Nevertheless. Cub left a large circular dimple in a convenient place, so that the homeowner can bring his Mai Tai or Pina Colada with him on his journey across his lawn. Not that your Curmudgeon would ever do such a thing. Never drink and mow: you might hit a rock and spill your drink!

If you think this is silly and frivolous, you have never had a large lawn on your To Do list.

After scanning its face again and again,
I began to scale it, picking my holds
With intense caution. About half-way
To the top, I was suddenly brought to
A dead stop, with arms outspread
Clinging close to the face of the rock
Unable to move hand or foot
Either up or down. My doom
Appeared fixed. I MUST fall.
There would be a moment of
Bewilderment, and then,
A lifeless rumble down the cliff
To the glacier below.
My mind seemed to fill with a
Stifling smoke. This terrible eclipse
Lasted only a moment, when life blazed
Forth again with preternatural clearness.
I seemed suddenly to become possessed
Of a new sense. My trembling muscles
Became firm again, every rift and flaw in
The rock was seen as through a microscope,
My limbs moved with a positiveness and precision
With which I seemed to have
Nothing at all to do.

-- Gary Snyder

By MasterFarker cranberryzero@yahoocom.

Transit of Venus

DENNIS HWANG HAS DECLOAKED HIMSELF as the artist in virtual residence on the hompage of Google: Oodles of Doodles:

My name is Dennis, and I'm the guy who draws the Google doodles. But the doodle tradition started here before I did. The first doodle was produced by (who else?) Larry and Sergey, who, when they attended the Burning Man festival in summer 1999, put a little stick figure on the home page logo in case the site crashed and someone wanted to know why nobody was answering the phone. By the time I began an internship here in the summer of 2000, the company was producing doodles on a regular basis. At the time I was a Stanford undergrad majoring in art and computer science, and, although I hadn't been hired to do anything remotely related to logo design, I eventually stumbled into my first doodle gig (Bastille Day, July 2000, for which I did a fairly boring flag motif).

Pointer @ growabrain

As we begin our second year here at American Digest, we looked about the charred wreckage of our first year and scrambled to find something that could be salvaged from the ruins.

Fortunately, there was one thing which, in the heat and the whirl of the last year, had completely escaped our notice.

We've become used to the deluge of awards and the kudos of our peers during the tumult of the great American realignment. Indeed, we've had to put in several extra trophy cases in the last year just to keep up with them. But we have to admit we did let one award slip by us a few months ago that we really should have mentioned.

It was on a lackluster day here at American Digest headquarters last April when we accepted a collect call from the Academy of LiveJournal Studies. Imagine our surprise when a husky voice informed us that we had been designated at the "Official WebLog of the Internet" by a unanimous vote of every website known to Google, including the cached copies.

Not being inclined to trumpet such an achievement, we let it go at the time and also declined to pay the $15,000 fee for a listing in all the major search engines that came with it.

Still, the memory of the brief flutter we felt on that day came back to us this afternoon and we thought, "Why the Hell Not?"

After all if Pentax, an otherwise also ran in the realms of photographic equipment can become "THE OFFICIAL DIGITAL CAMERA OF THE INTERNET" there's really no point in our hiding the fact that we have, for some time now, been "THE OFFICIAL WEBLOG OF THE INTERNET."

IT DOESN'T HAVE THE PLOT OR PUNCH OF "FINDING NEMO," but RNA Interference Animated will still prove to be one of the more fascinating depictions of cutting edge genetic visualization.

IT SEEMS LIKE ONLY YESTERDAY DAN RATHER AND HIS ILK were whining about the overbearing coverage of Ronald Reagan. Wait a minute, it was yesterday. But now it seems we can get back to our media's regularly scheduled fornication festival -- "What Makes America Rotten!"

Today's hot, steaming helping "the badness that is our country" comes to you via the Washington Posts' front page. It's about dogs and the fact that they are scary. Who knew? And 'authorized' scary dogs at that: Use of Dogs to Scare Prisoners Was Authorized (washingtonpost.com). (Where's the author of "No Bad Dogs" when terrorists need him, I ask you?)

I'm really pleased to see that the Post and other major media have not been taken too far off their game in the last week. So far I score it:

Major Media Attention on the Death of Ronald Reagan: 1 week.
Major Media Attention on scuzzy Iraq Prison Abuse: 6 weeks and counting.

It's nice to see that these guardians of "the truth," these "professionals," are continuing to pound the citizens of America over the head with their self-inflated poo-poo cushions without the least bit of shame. Yes, they've created a state with their unswerving devotion to the 'public's right to know, to know, to know, to know, to know,' in which we can all say "Two months ago I could not spell 'Abu Gharib,' now I are one."

It's already the case that the onanistic frenzy over Abu Gharib has reduced at least 60% of sentient Americans to the state of "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." I wonder what the Las Vegas line is on when the media will so saturate the population that 100% would sooner fire one full clip from a nail gun into their foreheads than hear "Abu Gharib" one more time.

I know I've locked all my power tools up and mailed the key to my maiden aunt in Heaven.

Today's Pew Study on Public Attitudes Towards the Media pretty clearly shows that traditional media such as the Washington Post and the Network News are heading towards the boneyard of failed businesses at something approaching Warp One. I'm sure they're all sitting around wondering "Why?"

Nope. I take that back. It's 10 AM here. They're probably all ordering broiled fish, a small salad, and a daring wine spritzer at lunch on the expense account in Washington and New York just about now.

Now, I could have been a doctor
Helping the sick
And I could have been a lawyer
But you know that ain't my stick
'coz I feel so bad
If a patient didn't do well
And I feel just as bad
To leave a client in jail

And that is why
That's why I chose
I chose to sing the blues

Now a man has a lot
That he could present
Just to think I could have been
President
But I can't understand
What politicians say
So I wanna talk to you
In my own little way

And that is why (that is why)
That's why I chose (that's why I chose)
I chose to sing the blues
-- Ray Charles, "I Choose to Sing the Blues

Say it three times swiftly: "NoteTakerEctoBloggingNoteTakerEctoBloggingNoteTakerEctoBlogging"

KEVIN SHERIDAN goes to the top of my list for living treasures of the internet with his masterful tutorial on blogging via NoteTaker and Ecto:

But what if blogging could be pursued with a virtual notebook? A notebook that has the power to clip and save items from the Internet? A notebook that allows content searchs of itself? A notebook that could be structured to mirror the organiztion of the user's weblog? A notebook with entries that are transformed into blog postings with the click of a mouse?

-- Notetaker Blogging

If you're working with a Mac, Sheridan's tutorial plus AquaMinds' NoteTaker - Product (best Mac Note Software Ever) and the brilliant Ecto , will change your life. It may even enable you to get one.

THE WEB STOOD UP on its hindlegs and barked today with the "revelation" that dogs understand speech:

German researchers have found a border collie named Rico who understands more than 200 words and can learn new ones as quickly as many children.
-- Dogs Understand Commands

Why a dog named "Rico" would choose to learn German is beyond us. Perhaps it has something to do with a dog's desire to obey orders.

The research into Rico's talents evidently took years and consumed God knows how many milkbones.

-- Pencil Inventions

OKAY, OKAY, Okay, so call me an old softy, but I have to think that Smoove the Worm , starring Natalie "Gnat" Lileks, is simply the best movie you can see in the next two minutes.

Harpers Magazine, June 1865, regarding the The Death of Lincoln:

"Men and papers who had opposed his policy and vilified him personally, now vied with his adherents and friends in lauding the rare wisdom and goodness which marked his conduct and character."

We note in passing that American Digest is now at the one year mark.

For those interested in numbers, this is article # 1,590 (more or less).

SIDELINES

Hit & Run remarks on the rolling fashion disaster of the United States in: What, your "Who Farted?" t-shirt was at the cleaners?

"Like the Afghan mujahideen, however, Casual Wear was an anti-communist tool easier to build than to dismantle. And last week this one came back to us in a fashion catastrophe of stunning proportions."

So far, so right: "This campaign is like a World Series between the Cubs and the Red Sox."
Glenn Reynolds

"The bomber will always get through ... I think it is well also for the man in the street to realise that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed."
-- British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, House of Commons, November 1932

-- HyperWar: Problems of Social Policy

Images from the Age of American Innocence #12,945

from: The 12 Dumbest Covers of American Comic Books

Charles, Vasa, Minnesota, 2002
chromogenic print
from: ALEC SOTH
Sleeping by the Mississippi
@ Stephen Wirtz Gallery

Two Things Can Tell You All You Need to Know About Anything:

The Two Things about National Security:
1. Bring overwhelming force to bear.
2. Let them hate, so long as they fear.

The Two Things about World Conquest:
1. Divide and Conquer.
2. Never invade Russia in the winter.

--The Two Things

Fundamentalism isn't the problem by Kenneth Minogue

"The moral propaganda that has in most Western states become the substitute for our devitalized tradition of moral conduct is based on the principle of "believing that." Race and sex are examples of areas that have become undiscussable because a blanket of right-thinking dogma has been draped over them in schools, universities and public spaces. The problem with this solution to the problem of so-called prejudice is that human beings are intrepid generalizers. It needs but a couple of unfortunate encounters with some definable others to generate a hostile stereotype. Often, one will do. I conclude that the project of creating perfection by imposing the right thoughts on people cannot possibly work. Indeed, Communist regimes tried that road to utopia far more energetically than would be possible in our still more or less free societies. The moment the screws were loosened, the whole edifice tumbled. "

An icon of righteous and religious modesty

RETURN THAT INTERNET DOWNLOAD? SURE THING. HERE'S MY COPY: "A top Croatian pop star has appealed to the public to return or destroy private pictures of her enjoying a lusty sex romp which appeared on the Internet this week. Severina Vuckovic told local newspapers the pictures and an 11-minute video of her making love to an unidentified dark-haired man had been stolen from her private collection. The pictures showed up on an internet site June 1, 2004 and immediately became the hottest news in the former Yugoslav republic, where 32 year-old Vuckovic had previously been an icon of righteous and religious modesty."
--
Yahoo!
Why can't she do the decent thing and just build a career on it like Paris Hilton?

Barcode Yourself by Scott Blake: "Enter personal information about yourself to be bar coded. All of the calculations in Barcode Yourself are based on real world facts, gathered from the Internet."

Oh, you know your barcode is true because it was gathered from the Internet. Right.

Still, useful for those "Hello, My Name Is" conference tags.

Notes on Ovine Aviation: "Courtney Love surrendered to police Friday for allegedly assaulting a 32-year-old woman with a liquor bottle, authorities said. "
-- Southern California Crank, Smack and Moonshine Industries Collapse

Has their lovely flame gratefully died? Dead Bassist Phil Lesh's ex is pawning his love tokens on ebay: eBay item 3819312441 (Ends Jun-11-04 18:00:00 PDT) - RARE 70s PULSAR LED/LCD LADIES 14KT WATCH OF PHIL LESH
"THIS WAS A WEDDING GIFT TO ME FROM MY EX-HUSBAND PHIL LESH, THE GRATEFUL DEAD BASS PLAYER AND OTHER THINGS....TIME LIGHTS UP FINE WHEN LOWER BUTTON PUSHED, ALWAYS HAS. IN FACT, TO ME IT ALWAYS LOOKS LIKE IT IS GLOWING, BUT THEN MY TV LOOKS LIKE ITS ON WHEN ITS UNPLUGGED TOO. MY MARRIAGE DIED BUT MY PULSAR KEEPS ON TICKING!!! HERE IS YOUR CHANCE TO OWN A PIECE OF ROCK AND ROLL MEMOROBILIA! PLUS THE MONEY WILL BE GOING TO A GOOD CAUSE.... MY SHOCK THERAPY! .... SOME SCRATCHES ON CRYSTAL BUT NOTHING SEVERE. LISTEN I GOTTA GO I LIVE ON THE 6TH FLOOR AND SOME GREEN GUY WITH WINGS IS HOVERING OUTSIDE MY WINDOW! NO RESERVE!!!!"

Who says the Democrats haven't had an original idea for a decade? "The Democratic National Committee, citing the "unfair advantage" accrued by the Bush campaign in the wake of Ronald Reagan's passing, today called on Bill Clinton to perish in late September or October of this year. "Oh c'mon, you finished your book. What do you have left to live for, Hillary?" asked DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe in a personal appeal to the 42nd President."
-- defective yeti

The Cassini Space Mission is closing in on Saturn's Phoebe : "Phoebe, Saturn's largest outer moon, is the first target of exploration for the Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft. This composite shows a set of four images taken from June 7 through June 10, 2004, by the spacecraft as it approached Phoebe. This eccentric moon has a diameter of 220 kilometers (about 136.7 miles) and orbits Saturn in the opposite direction of its larger interior moons. Previous ground-based observations have shown water ice present on its surface."

Short and sweet on the new Pew Media Poll from Roger Simon: "The bad news is we're ignorant, but the good news is we're no longer duped."

• Linkblogging Lite
• Saturn: Now and Then
• When 3,000 Dead is Still Not Enough to Say "Enough"
• Spinsanity Comes to Slate
• God Wins on a Technicality
• Signs That This Blogging Thing Is Catching On
• For Ten Bucks the Whole Castro Thing Could Have Been Avoided
• The 80th Airborne: Bush From Above
• The Very Model of the Metaphor
• Born to Mow
• John Muir on Mt. Ritter
• 2004 SUV Models Announced
• Dennis the Google Doodler
• When "Product Placement" Goes Too Far
• We'd Like to Thank All the Little People
• A Thing Called "Slicer"
• Finishing Touches
• Okay, Patriotic Break's Over, Everybody Back to Prison
• What He Said
• The Way of NoteTakerEctoBlogging
• YaWoof! Dog Speaks German
• Dumb Pencil
• Why I Love the Internet
• The Passing of a President, 1865
• One Year Old Today