I'm Late...Didja Start Without Me?

Frequent readers of EIP know I’m a hockey fan, or more specifically a Detroit Red Wings fan. Being a hockey fan isn’t easy. Our sport is probably the most misunderstood and least appreciated of all the major professional sports in the US of A, sucking hind teat, as it were, to the NFL, the NBA, and MLB. Hockey is marginally more popular than, say, soccer, but that’s subject to change since Beckham came to the US. I just think we’re misunderstood, all other criticisms aside. So, Gentle Reader, it’s in the spirit of understanding that I give you Hockey 101. Excerpts:

Stereotypical fan

When it comes to NHL fans, they tend to be fairly vocal and quite particular about how they view the sport, especially if they are fans of one of the Original Six who tend to have something of a superiority complex when it comes to expansion teams.

However, fans of the various national teams are rabidly patriotic. For many of the more prestigious nations – Russia, the Czech Republic and Sweden, to name but three – ice hockey rivals football as the most popular national sport.

In Canada, ice hockey outweighs every other pastime as the most popular, and as such Canadian NHL fans tend to be the most patriotic and outspoken of all.

[…]

Why should I watch/play it?

The sport is fast and furious and while a live game may make it difficult to follow the puck at times, the action is unbelievable up close.

There is nothing quite like the sound of skates scraping against the ice as player twist and turn at break-neck speed and the atmosphere inside the arenas of the NHL is unlike any other sport in north America, especially when it is one of the well-worn rivalries in Canada or the northern states. (ed: Like Detroit and Colorado. Go watch…and understand. Full story here.)

Still, if you get the chance to catch a live game on TV, it is still worth a watch and since the rule changes in the NHL last season the game is more exciting than ever – marrying the speed and excitement of the skating with the raw power, brute force and sometimes down-right passion that comes when players get a little too hot under the colour (sic) and start trading blows.

It’s all true. Read the whole thing to glean an understanding and…hopefully…a better appreciation of the greatest sport in the entire freakin’ world. Bar none.

Speaking as an Original Six fan, of course.

So. Rupert Murdoch is gonna own what might rightly be called the Crown Jewel of American Journalism…the Wall Street Journal. (And please don’t go talking about The Gray Lady’s former glories. Past is past.)

Rupert Murdoch's courtship of the Bancroft family appears to have triumphed, with enough shares pledged to make News Corp. the owner of the newspaper whose Web site you are now reading. Readers are naturally asking how this will change the journalism we practice. Our sincere answer is that we intend to stand for the same principles and standards we have for more than a hundred years.

[…]

The Journal has had to adapt many times over the years to changing technology and reading habits. In the past five years alone, we have redesigned the U.S. Journal twice and the foreign editions once, while adding a Saturday paper and investing in online publishing. To the extent that News Corp. can provide capital for further innovation, the Journal's future as a business should be enhanced. And make no mistake: Business success is vital to editorial independence, precisely because it provides the resources to report and comment in ways that might offend advertisers or governments.

I came to the WSJ rather late in life, back in 1981. A former commander of mine (in England) turned me on to what I previously perceived to be a rather stuffy, totally business-oriented rag read only by Fat Cats. I was wrong. And I became a subscriber shortly after the revelation, halting my subscription only when the Journal couldn’t come to me in a timely manner. (The WSJ is delivered by US Mail here in the hinterlands, arriving a day late. Who wants to read yesterday’s news?) The WSJ was part of my morning coffee ritual for well over 20 years, closer to 30, actually. I still read it occasionally (at the library) and always read the freebies posted on Opinion Journal. But, Lordy, do I ever miss the paper…the physical paper. Reading on-line just ain’t the same, and that’s why I’ve never sprung for the on-line pay version of the WSJ.

Let us pray nothing much changes…in the all-important editorial and hard news areas…when Rupert assumes control.

NewsBusters has more, including lots and lots of “media reaction,” and it’s pretty good stuff.

You can take this with a grain of salt, but it’s interesting:

"The cease-fire acted as a life jacket for the organization [at the end of the Second Lebanon War]," a Hizbullah officer said in an interview aired by Channel 10 on Tuesday.

In the interview, the unnamed officer said Hizbullah gunmen would have surrendered if the fighting last summer had continued for another 10 days.

Unnamed or not, I wouldn’t give a plug nickel for this guy’s chances, given the organization he’s a member of and the fact he’s directly contradicting his CinC. Unless, of course, it’s more makara.

Today’s Pic(s): In direct contrast to yesterday’s pic of El Casa Móvil De Pennington outstanding in its field, here we have cheek-to-jowl parking in an urban RV park, specifically in Reno, NV. I never stayed in these sort of parks for very long, given the crowded nature of the accommodations, and the associated fact that I need a little more space and a LOT more distance from those extraneous “noises in the night” that emanate from folks’ homes…fixed OR mobile. But especially mobile.

And about those flags… the owner of the flags was a minor cause célébré in the local media just before I arrived on the scene. Briefly: The RV Park owner delivered a “cease and desist or MOVE” letter to the owner of this RV about those flags. Not willing to take the “lose ‘em or move ‘em” alternative he was given, the owner went directly…not passing Go…to a local TV station who did a human interest piece on the flags. The resulting outpouring of mail and negative comments to the park owner got him to back down, and the flags remained flying. The Little Guy won one…

May, 2000.

A Desultory Saturday…

If you’re a real hockey fan you’ll want to follow the Adventures of Stanley this summer…

Join hockey's most prized trophy as it parties throughout the summer of 2007. Each member of the Anaheim Ducks assumes possession of the Stanley Cup for 24 hours, and you'll get an insider's view through exclusive stories and photographs as the Stanley Cup visits locations around the globe.

The STANLEY CUP JOURNAL is updated every Tuesday and Friday from the last game of the Stanley Cup Final through to the end of summer. This is followed by additional accounts thereafter up until the official engraving and ring presentation. (Ed: Emphases in original)

The Stanley Cup has made some amazing journeys during its storied history. International travel is not uncommon in this day of star Russian, Finnish, Swedish, etc., etc., NHL players. As an example, the last time the Wings won the Cup it traveled to the Czech Republic, Sweden, and Russia…just to name three countries. There’s a great photo essay of the Cup’s 2002 travels with Red Wings team members here.

One would expect 2007 to be much the same.

Ever the contrarian, Jules Crittenden feels bad for Paris Hilton. Really. Me? Not so much. I haven’t been paying that much attention. I mean, you can’t ignore her…that’s not possible if you have a TeeVee or surf the ‘net. But Mr. Crittenden’s article is about the only one I’ve actually read. And I suppose I’d have to agree that watching a full-grown woman having a total breakdown in public would be a lil bit heart-rending.

General Peter Pace will step down as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in September. SecDef Robert Gates has nominated Admiral Mike Mullen, the current Chief of Naval Operations, to replace him. The ostensible reason for not re-nominating Gen. Pace for a second term is to avoid a brutal re-confirmation hearing* in the Senate, if you believe the official rationale delivered by Gates yesterday. There’s an awful lot of “what does this mean” talk in the media concerning Gen. Pace’s non-continuation as Chairman…much of it centering around speculation that Pace was “too close” to Rumsfeld, Pace didn’t push back against Rumsfeld enough, Pace was a leading architect of the “failed” Iraq war plans, and that Gates wants “his own man” as Chairman. I even heard one pundit characterize the action as Pace being “fired.” Gen. Pace is the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to only serve a single two-year term since 1964; so, yeah, relieving him is highly unusual.

I tend to agree with one pundit, whose name I cannot recall (but it might have been David Brooks on The News Hour), that it’s ironic to have troops in the field dodging bullets, mortar shells and IEDs, yet the JCS Chairman is perceived to be incapable of dodging hard questions from a few senators. I think General Pace would have done just fine at his re-confirmation hearing, based upon the performances I’ve seen him deliver in committee hearings in the past. It’s a shame that such a fine officer with 40 years of dedicated service will retire under a cloud. But that’s Washington, I suppose.

* There’s some truth to this…John F’n Kerry says:

“It is a sad state of affairs when this Administration withdraws a general they believe is qualified simply to avoid having to publicly defend their failed Iraq policy,” Senator Kerry said. “Congress has an obligation to ask tough questions about Iraq, and the architects of this war have an obligation to answer them openly and honestly. We will continue to hold this Administration accountable on Iraq. The next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff must tell Congress and the American people the truth about this war.”

What was that the Jack Nicholson character said about the truth in “A Few Good Men?” Seems to me it applies here…

The cover story in tomorrow’s NYT Magazine is all about pretty-boy presidential candidate John Edwards. And the story is good…very good. Less for its extensive coverage on Edwards than for the author’s rational and pragmatic explanations of the underpinnings of Edwards’ much-publicized “Two Americas” campaign…including brief profiles of past attempts by politicians to address/eliminate poverty in America, beginning with Johnson’s “Great Society” and the accompanying “War on Poverty” (which was a gigantic failure, IMHO). The story is a rather lengthy read, and is written in a remarkably neutral tone, oftentimes descending into what I would call “less than favorable” opinions on Edwards and his views. At any rate I came away with a refreshed and somewhat better appreciation for my own economic views, which are decidedly Reaganesque. I’m also more thoroughly convinced than ever that Edwards’ economic views are wrong. Surprised?

Today’s Pic: More plane pr0n from the Hill Aerospace Museum…this time it’s the nose of a B-17 named “Short Bier.”

Last month…at Hill AFB.

Mostly Filler

Christopher Hitchens, writing in the June issue of Vanity Fair (Londonistan Calling):

In the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings, which killed 52 civilians (including a young Afghan, Atique Sharifi, who had fled to London to escape the Taliban) and injured hundreds more, I found that American television interviewers were all asking me the same question: How can this be? Britain is the country of warm beer and cricket and rain-lashed seaside resorts, not a place of arms for exotic and morbid cults. British press coverage struck the same plaintive note. One of the murderers, Shehzad Tanweer, was a cricket enthusiast from Leeds, in Yorkshire, whose family ran a fish-and-chips shop. You can't get much more assimilated than that. Yet Britain's former head of domestic intelligence, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller (and you can't get much more British than that, either), said last year that there are more than "1,600 identified individuals" within the borders of the kingdom who are ready to follow Tanweer's example (including those in whose honor we now all have to part with our liquids and gels at the airport). And, according to Manningham-Buller, "over 100,000 of our citizens consider the July 2005 attacks in London justified."

[…]

In the 1960s, many Asians moved to Britain in quest of employment and education. They worked hard, were law-abiding, and spent much of their time combating prejudice. Their mosques were more like social centers. But their children, now grown, are frequently contemptuous of what they see as their parents' passivity. Often stirred by Internet accounts of jihadists in faraway countries like Chechnya or Kashmir, they perhaps also feel the urge to prove that they have not "sold out" by living in the comfortable, consumerist West. A recent poll by the Policy Exchange think tank captures the problem in one finding: 59 percent of British Muslims would prefer to live under British law rather than Shari'a; 28 percent would choose Shari'a. But among those 55 and older, only 17 percent prefer Shari'a, whereas in the 16-to-24 age group the figure rises to 37 percent. Almost exactly the same proportions apply when the question is whether or not a Muslim who converts to another faith should be put to death …

As usual, Hitch nails it…and damns multi-culturalism as the principal “prime mover” in turning London into Londonistan. I know I’m preaching to the choir, Gentle Reader, but do go read.

And lastly (on this particular subject), I’ll offer you this: The “Islamization” of London has been going on a lot longer than most people think. One small piece of anecdotal evidence: when The Second Mrs. Pennington and I arrived in London in 1980, all wide-eyed and positively amazed at our great good fortune to be assigned…for three whole years!… in the crucible of our cultural inheritance, one of the first things we noticed was the amount of graffiti written in Arabic. And there was lots of it. We then began to notice other things…such as women dressed more appropriately for Riyadh than the West End (no burkhas, but lotsa veils) and many, many more than one or two men walking about in jalabiyas, and certainly not last…the HUGE numbers of kebab stands and shops where English was spoken only to customers, but not amongst the help. (We patronized those kebab stands willingly and often, too, food being what it was—or wasn’t, more appropriately—in 80’s London.) Other than considering the phenomenon(s) passing strange enough to remark upon, we gave them no further thought. But, 1980 was indeed a different time. It all begins in the most innocuous manner, now doesn’t it?

(h/t for the link: Chap)

Dang! I just glanced at my watch and it’s now 1137 hrs (as I type) and my self-imposed posting deadline of “sometime before noon…usually” is hard upon me. And, aside from the one paltry entry above (paltry, in terms of quantity…not quality), I have nothing to show for the last three hours of link-chasing and reading. So, that said, Gentle Reader, you could do a lot worse than clicking on the “Chap” link above…as the greatest part of those three hours of which I speak was spent chasing links from his site. Great, good stuff in great quantities.

Apropos of nothing, and simply to fill space, as it were… I’d be interested in knowing how all y’all blog. Your mental and physical processes of blogging, that is. Most folks post single entries on discrete subjects, one at a time, and make several entries over the course of a day. I do what I call “omnibus posting,” which is to say I usually put up a single post a day with several discrete subjects, all included in the same post. If I come across something that just won’t wait until tomorrow, I’ll post again…but that’s not too common.

So anyway…My modus operandi, in condensed form, goes like this:

1. Open my monthly blog file in MS-Word, if’n it isn’t already.


2. Open a new tab in Firefox and begin my daily reads, usually with Lou, Laurie, Lex (that does it for the ells), the two sons, and the rest of the blog roll as I see fit. Most days I don’t come close to hitting them all.


3. Open new tabs in Firefox to chase linkies.


4. Cut ‘n’ paste excerpts and linkage from interesting stuff into the aforementioned Word file.


5. Write my comments to said linkage.


6. Save often.


7. Rinse. Repeat.


8. Open my image editor and peruse the photo galleries for a candidate for “Today’s Pic.”


9. Agonize greatly over the lack of good pictures and swear I’ll take a bunch of new ones, today.


10. Select something, anyway (most of the time).


11. Or not.


12. Copy from the Word file.


13. Paste into Bogger and publish.


14. View post.


15. Edit. (I always miss something…)


16. Close it all out and go do something meaningful, like finish the coffee and smoke a cigar or small portion thereof. Or go riding. Or do laundry. All of which are on today’s agenda, by the way.

Did I say “condensed form?” Yeah, I did. Disregard.

So…how do you do it?

1157 hours…time to POST! (Insert smiley-face here.)

Just More...uh...Stuff

A Comparison of Live Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo Mail. The money graf:

Overall we prefer Gmail over all other webmail applications because performance (speed) is consistently fast, and emails can be tagged making search much more effective. They also offer more storage and other features, and it’s free. However, Yahoo and Live Hotmail offer more mainstream Outlook-like user interfaces (although Live Hotmail does not allow you to access other email accounts from their application), whereas Gmail takes some time to get used to. If you are looking for speed and tagging is important, Gmail is for you. If you are looking for the closest thing to Outlook online, go with Yahoo Mail.

There’s a neat three-way comparison chart of available features, too.

Envy:

Everyone suspected that the investors, founders and early employees of YouTube made tidy sums when it was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion in stock late last year.

[…]

A founder and YouTube’s chief executive Chad Hurley received 694,087 shares of Google and an additional 41,232 in a trust. Based on Google’s closing price yesterday of $470.01, the shares are worth more than $345 million.

Another founder, Steven Chen, received 625,366 shares and an additional 68,721 in a trust, for more than $326 million.

[…]

When the deal was announced in October, YouTube was less than two years old and had about 70 employees. Several of the early employees are listed in the filing statement as owning thousands of Google shares.

That’s a lot of beer. And a Ferrari. Or three. Assuming the stock recipients are selling their stock. And they are.

So…I’m a little slow sometimes (ed: sometimes? How about MOST of the time? Shuddup!). I’m watching C-SPAN this morning, and Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army Chief of Staff, is testifying before the House Appropriations Defense sub-committee. He’s looking pretty sharp in his new Army Dress Blues. “Dress Blues?” Yep. Complete with Civil War era rank epaulettes. I didn’t realize the Army has changed its uniform, but they did—last summer. You can see it here.

Lileks to the rescue! I’m fond of describing myself as socially moderate and conservative when it comes to fiscal and national defense matters. But…what exactly is a “social moderate,” anyway? James provides the definitions, thusly:

Social liberal: believes Howard Stern should be able to say the F word not just on satellite radio, but broadcast as well.

Social moderate-liberal: same as above, but wishes Howard wouldn’t say it so much.

Social moderate: believes Howard Stern should not say the F word on broadcast radio, but has no desire to control the content of satellite channels to which people freely subscribe.

Social moderate-conservative: Howard should definitely not say it on broadcast radio, and while he probably has the right to say it on satellite, Senate hearings into decency on cable and satellite stations isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Social conservative: doesn’t believe Howard Stern should say the word, and if you subscribe to satellite radio, you’re supporting Howard Stern, and have no right to call yourself a social conservative.

Yep. That’s me!

He kept them…but you probably already know this. The NYT:

Mr. Edwards announced on Thursday, after 36 hours of deliberation, that he would keep on his campaign staff two liberal feminist bloggers with long cybertrails of incendiary comments on sex, religion and politics.

Deliberations over the fate of the two bloggers, Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, created a crisis in Mr. Edwards’s nascent campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 and illuminated the treacherous road ahead as candidates of both parties try to harness the growing power of the online world. The case of the two women had left Mr. Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, with difficult choices.

Difficult choices, indeed. On the one hand, if Edwards had fired them, the nutroots would have had his head, figuratively speaking. They were already going down that road. On the other hand, his disingenuous rationale for keeping them just reinforces his hypocrisy, and that of the two bloggers in question. Marcotte’s and McEwan’s “apologies” said, basically, “it was just satire, we weren’t serious.” In pig’s eye. They were damned serious, and that’s the frickin’ problem. Jeff Goldstein says it best:

Of course it was her intent. Just as it was McEwan’s intent. And worst of all, Edwards knows it. That he has pretended to take the two at their word, in an ostentatious gesture of “trust,” is precisely the kind of staged treacle that makes people doubt the sincerity of politicians; and that both Marcotte and McEwan have assured their own personal Patriarch that they’ll behave, now that he’s promoted them to the grownups’ table, is, to put it bluntly, one of the most pathetic public surrenderings of personal integrity I’ve ever seen.

Seriously. We should feel bad for them.

That is, were we to actually believe they meant any of it. Because how this plays out for the netroots is this way: either they are cheering on an ideological sellout, or they are knowingly and happily embracing an opportunistic liar. So. Congrats to them. Once again, they’ve covered themselves in white hot sticky glory!

What he said.

Today’s Pic: More Adolphus. The pic on the right is an interior shot of the ex-girlfriend in front of one of those Flemish tapestries, and the exterior (at the top) is a more-detailed shot of some of the stonework on the façade.

Lou mentioned in yesterday’s comments that she would post about the Adolphus on her blog. And she has. Great story, that!

Still February of 2004. Still in Dallas. As always, click the pic for the larger version(s).