URLs du Jour

2006-06-09

  • An obscure musician named Paul McCartney will celebrate his 64th birthday this coming Sunday. Some of us have been waiting since 1967 for this, when we first heard the song "When I'm Sixty-Four".
    I could be handy, mending a fuse
    When your lights have gone.
    You can knit a sweater by the fireside
    Sunday mornings go for a ride,
    Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
    Who could ask for more.
    Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
    When I'm sixty-four.
    (I bet I could have typed that in from memory. But I cheated and used the Google.)

    A good article by Myrna Blyth is here at NRO; she was present at the beginning, at the Beatles' first press conference in New York. She liked Linda more than Heather.

  • You've probably heard that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, famous terror mastermind, was recently transformed into Maggot Helper with some help from a couple extremely competent American F-16s. He reports on the incident via Iowahawk:
    Now, back in the madrassa when we studied the afterlife, I always wondered what would be the last thing to go through my head. I'm pretty sure now it was one of Mahmoud's anklebones. And if you're wondering if it was painless? Imagine a full-frontal 800 degree root canal while listening to a Neil Young record. But hey, I figure no big whoop, just the admission price to heaven's eternal ho sammich.
    He goes on to describe what happened after that. It's not quite what he expected.

  • Declan McCullagh reports on a defeat of colleges hoping to quash FCC regulations demanding that law enforcement entities be able to remotely install "wiretaps" on college networks.

    More appeals coming, I'd bet. Previously blogged here last year.

  • In recent blogroll tinkering, I've added:

    • From the wilds of North Hampton, New Hampshire, Amy Kane's Atlantic Avenue. In a recent post, she reports that she's living in her own future. Unfortunately, no hot stock tips or lottery numbers were involved, just Styx songs.

    • Radley Balko's blog, The Agitator. Radley is your go-to guy on antics of the nanny state, the police state, snoopy governmental agencies, and drug warriors. If you're straddlin' the fence between libertarianism and conservatism, Radley will keep you from falling off onto the conservative side.

    • Bill Gnade's Contratimes, a Monadblog. I can't describe it any better than the six blind men of Indostan could describe the elephant. Mr. Gnade is funny, wise, sharp, and a darn good writer. Just go check it out.

    • Greg Mankiw's blog, which is cleverly titled "Greg Mankiw's Blog". Greg is a Harvard econ prof, but nevertheless makes a good deal of sense.

    • And finally, The Technology Liberation Front, a group blog of "liberty-loving technophiles who are passionate about progress and suspicious of government meddling in the high tech arena." As should be we all.

    No deletions this time around. All the links over there are well worth your surfing time, even if only to give you something to get mad at.