It's human nature to ask questions and to try to lay blame after an event such as Hurricane Katrina. But I suggest that this is a bit inappropriate at this juncture: first, because it is too early to have enough concrete information, and second, because there is still an emergency effort which should have our attention.

But allow me to lay the framework for the ensuing debate and to filter out some of the crap that's been floating around out there...

Global warming caused this! ... Um, no. This attack is false. Meteorologists state that this hurricane cycle is normal. Perhaps global warming will and already is leading towards a decrease in the time of the cycle, thus bringing the rough period more often, but that cannot be said to have significantly increased the odds that New Orleans would get hit. And furthermore, no study has ever been done to show that hurricanes have become any more frequent.

New Orleanians are at fault for settling in a low area! Again, false. The city arose, necessarily, at the junction of the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico, because it was a natural location for a trading port. At the time the people did not and could not have possessed the foresight to have rejected the economic impulses and located somewhere else. After which, the city's elevation actually dropped because of water usage and that made it even more risky.

But what about people who moved there later or people who developed the Gulf coast? There is some merit to this. Scientific consensus seems to be that development along the Gulf coast removed some of the wetlands which act as a natural sponge, which made the hurricane's impact worse on the area, including New Orleans. Further, we possessed the necessary knowledge in the latter part of this century to know that development of the area posed such risks.

It's President Bush or Governor X's fault! The most credible theory that a specific leader or group of leaders should be held to blame is that the levies in New Orleans were not bolstered to handle a category 4/5 hurricane. However, a category 4/5 hurricane hitting New Orleans this year was by no means a certainty, and undoubtedly the budget was under numerous pressures.

Lawmakers are faced with the eternal struggle of fixing several problems at once and addressing the most urgent need-- perhaps poverty or crime or transportation, in New Orleans. Nevertheless, I tend to agree that a fund of a small percentage of the budget each year should have been created to gather the necessary funds to bolster the levies. Lawmakers and the public had enough warning shots from Mother Nature in the last few years.

...

So the short of the matter is that we have an emergency to fix right now, and then we should begin answering the tough questions to better prepare for the future. Such is life.

At a time when a major city, a whole region, and indeed, our entire nation has been affected by one of the worst natural disasters in our history, you would think they would know better.

You would think that their message would be simply to roll up our sleeves, open up our wallets, and offer up our prayers.

You would think that now, at least for now, they could put politics aside.

But this is the New York Times. And for them, everything is political. A sample from today's editorial:

"But this seems like the wrong moment to dwell on fault-finding, or even to point out that it took what may become the worst natural disaster in American history to pry President Bush out of his vacation."

Now I ask you fair-minded readers of DC.com: was that necessary? Where is the relevance? In one breath, you say that now is not the time to cast blame, and then in the next, you do exactly that. As if President Bush should somehow be held liable for this catastrophe because he wasn't in Washington? So he was on vacation. Every president has taken vacations and so do the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and most Americans in general.

The finger-pointing doesn't stop there.

"It was also a reminder of how much we rely on government to imagine the unimaginable and plan for the worst. As the levees of Lake Pontchartrain gave way, flooding New Orleans, it seemed pretty clear that in this case, government did not live up to the job."

I am sitting here in Columbus, debating on whether to drive to New York, so I can scream at the person responsible for this idiotic, baseless, and futile thought. Maybe if gas were cheaper, I'd jump in the Civic and explain to them that, while very powerful indeed, the federal government just might not be able to compete with Mother Nature when it comes to preventing such a monumental disaster. It was a category 4 hurricane when it hit, folks. The city is many feet below sea level. You do the math. The levees did their job for the many years previous, but this storm was just something that is impossible to guard against.

Perhaps the Times was too busy conniving ways to blame the Bush administration for Katrina to notice that Bush declared Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama disaster areas in a state of emergency before the hurricane made landfall. Or that he is releasing oil from the strategic reserves so that our economy doesn't grind to a halt.

Fortunately, I have figured out why the Times has to cast the hurricane as a failing of President Bush. The only other option would be to admit that Katrina was just simply an Act of God. But to the Gray Lady, there is no God but the federal government.

Al Sharpton recently called anti-war nut, Cindy Sheehan, "the conscience of the nation."

So let me get this straight... Cindy Sheehan is a mother of a fallen soldier. She claims to speak for all soldiers' moms, but she does not. The media presents a picture of her as a brave voice of dissent, but in fact she is being guided by a political PR firm. She is a tool. And she says things like comparing the U.S. soldiers in Iraq to terrorists. She is a nutcase.

What she most certainly is not is the "conscience of the nation."

The associate pastor of my parish, Fr. Jon Meyer, has become somewhat famous for starring in his very own Matrix-style poster. The poster, which was handed out in vast quantities at World Youth Day at which Meyer and some of my fellow parishoners were in attendance, was made to help develop interest in the Church and the priesthood in young Catholics. Read the MSNBC article here...

It has long been known that Apple and Motorola have been collaborating on an iTunes enabled cell phone... but now more details are emerging, and September 7th looks to be the date of unveiling.

Apple sure is hyping the hell out of that day.

The NYTimes and other sources are saying that the new device will hold possibly around 1 GB of data and have an interface inspired by the iPod. Speculation is also that Cingular will be the only carrier to handle the phone at first and that it will be mid-range priced.

We'll see how this device is and does. Combo all-in-one type gadgets rarely work as well as the separate components. However, it could be a huge cash cow for Apple if it is subsidized along with Cingular cell plans. But will it hurt iPod shuffle and/or iPod mini sales?

[thanks to Daniel for the Times link]

Here's a message to the trouble-makers in Iraq: stop it! If you want progress, stop killing each other. Pretty simple. Grow a brain and stop killing each other.

According to this NYTimes article, some music industry execs are unhappy with Steve Jobs and Apple's power in the digital music sales arena, and two labels may fight Jobs on music pricing, possibly leading towards reluctance to renew their song licenses to Apple.

The music industry has been price gouging consumers and bullying artists for too long, and Apple's incredible pricing leverage with them has been wonderful for music. Smaller artists have a more prominent front on the iTunes music store then they had previously in mainstream brick-and-morter stores, and the low distribution cost allows smaller artists to reach consumers more quickly and easily than ever before.

Oasis - "Little By Little":

We the people fight for our existence
We don't claim to be perfect
But we're free
We dream our dreams alone
With no resistance
Fading like the stars we wish to be

You know I didn't mean
What I just said
But my God woke up
On the wrong side of his bed
And it just don't matter now

Cos little by little
We gave you everything
You ever dreamed of
Little by little
The wheels of your life
Have slowly fallen off
Little by little
You have to give it all in all your life
And all the time I just ask myself why
You're really here

True perfection has to be imperfect
I know that that sounds foolish but it's true
The day has come
And now you'll have to accept
The life inside your head we give to you

You know I didn't mean
What I just said
But my God woke up
On the wrong side of his bed
And it just don't matter now

Cos little by little
We gave you everything
You ever dreamed of
Little by little
The wheels of your life
Have slowly fallen off
Little by little
You have to give it all in all your life
And all the time I just ask myself why
You're really here
Hey

Little by little
We gave you everything
You ever dreamed of
Little by little
The wheels of your life
Have slowly fallen off
Little by little
You had to give it all in all your life
And all the time I just ask myself why
You're really here
Why am I really here?
Why am I really here?

Katrina, still at category 5, is beginning to make landfall, and is on track to squarely hit New Orleans.

Please use the http://www.dailycontentions.com URL to reach this site... I've been having server trouble and while I juggle servers, that address will always work.

Roncalli improved to 2-0

Notre Dame begins their season, against Pitt next Saturday

The Colts begin in 2 weekends against the Balitmore Ravens

Today marks the anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave women the right to vote, a tragic day in American history.


*See the comments

I don't necessarily have anything against Purdue, but they're not my alma mater, u know? So I don't think it's very cool that the Google ads on my site (at 1:10 a.m.) are:

"Purdue University Girls / See How The Girls Stack Up From The Guys At Purdue University" and

"Purdue Univ. Merchandise / Low prices. Large selection of Purdue officially licensed items"

Ever wondered why a parkway is for driving, but a driveway is for parking? Well, you'll find this and many other adsurdities over at IndyLaw Net. Make sure and check out the comments under that post.

Say what you will about Pat Buchanan. But he is correct in predicting the death of Russia.

A recent study shows that women in Mother Russia no longer prefer to be mothers. They're having more abortions than births. When you throw in the abortions that go unreported... alot more than births. It's adding up too. Russia nows loses over three quarters of a million in population every year.

This is what happens when you turn away from free markets. And the fact that Russia is still one of the most God-less places on earth certainly doesn't help.

What are the consequences? Well, you take a Russia that's shrinking, stick it next to a China that's growing, throw in a few thousand nuclear warheads, a lust for natural resources....

For all you law school students, a conundrum. The lawyer of three Texas boys claiming abuse by a Catholic seminarian is suing Pope Benedict XVI, claiming that while Cardinal Ratzinger was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he conspired with the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston to shield potential abusers from the secular authorities. If the President certifies the Pope's immunity from litigation as a head of state, the lawyer is prepared to challenge the diplomatic relationship between the Holy See and the U.S. because it is a church.
Common sense tells me this is absurd. The 1st Amendment only prohibits the establishment of religion. Just because the United States forges diplomatic relations with a religious state, the act does not, as I understand, recognize anything regarding truths the said religion professes. If this effort succeeds, would the U.S, have to sever dimplomatic relations with Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc.? Can the U.S. only have diplomatic relations with purely secular nations?
I would think this effort will fail miserably, but I'm no legal scholar. For all those aspiring to be one, I would love to hear your thoughts.

I know i haven't contributed to the site in about 4 months (graduation, job searching, job rejection, etc.), but I felt compelled by the most absurd statements by Pat Robertson for US Special Forces to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Robertson recently made the rounds on the AM network shows to claim he was misquoted. Follow the links to the 700 Club's website and The Daily Show's headlines for Tuesday and Wednesday to reach your own conclusions.
The first conclusion is that Pat Robertson didn't tell the truth while making the rounds of the apology circuit. His exact comments were "I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it." If he's trying to apologize for what he said, he shouldn't softpedal it by claiming he said something else. However, i think the more long-term conclusion is Pat Robertson is freaking nuts. Advocating the assassination of a foreign leader is probably the dumbest thing any public figure can do, because automatically decimates the person's credibility on every subsequent issue on which the person comments. And it also marginalizes his 'followers', making them look like drunk-on-Kool-Aid drones of a ranting lunatic. Yes Mr. Robertson does own CBN and has the 1st Amendment right to say whatever the hell he wants on his own network. But I thought Mr. Robertson had enough media savvy to not self-destruct on the air. Apparently I was wrong.

OK, that post title was just meant to get your attention, and I assume it succeeded. But seriously, have you seen the latest photo that the Iraqi court released of Saddam Hussein??? They way they have him dolled up in that suit and his pose makes it look like they hired a GQ photographer.

The man is a mass-murdering criminal and doesn't need a photo spread. Please.

I decided to check the Google blog rankings again, and DC moved up from 35th spot to 28th in the news > personal analysis and opinion category. At this pace I'll soon be challenging Andrew Sullivan ;-)

Also, when glancing at my site stats, I noticed that for the last week, only 91% of my readers were using a computer with English set as the default language. A surprisingly large 8% were Chinese, and 1% were French speaking. A continent by continent breakdown yields a similar international view: 93% from North America, 5% from Asia, 1% from Europe, and 1% from Oceania (that's Australia and its neighbors for those of you from Gary, Indiana).

Fear is the 2nd deepest form of respect... The 1st deepest is...??

Israel's withdrawal of settlements from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank bodes well for the peace process in the region, and the fact that it has occurred with only minor skirmishes, with no deaths, is next to miraculous.

With those settlements gone, a 2-state solution is more possible than ever before, and Palestine's new leadership will not make the unreasonable demands that Arafat did in past failed negotiations.

The biggest threat to the peace process now is the same that it always has been: hardliners on both sides. On the Palestinians' side, Hamas must be kept under check or transformed away from militant positions. On the Israeli side, Netanyahu and hardliners that would support resettling the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank must not be re-elected.

The world is on the verge of something special in Israel/Palestine... How many people have the vision to see it?

Google's image is undergoing significant change. It began life as the hip search engine started by a couple Stanford grads, used by an increasing number of people who valued its power and simplicity. After going public and reaping huge economic gains from its advertising revenue and stock issuance, Google now is taking on a corporate feel.

And many in Silicon Valley fear that Google and its tactics with partners and aggression has quickly evolved into the next Microsoft.

Tech-wise, Google is as cool (or should I say hot) as ever. It has branched out into countless areas; shopping, mapping and satellite imagery, digital photo management, blogging, internet acceleration, and now instant messaging; and it is leveraging these features with each other. Silicon Valley start-ups, as Google once was, are having trouble entering new fields or gaining venture capital, because Google looms so large.

Nevertheless, merely being big and powerful does not make a company bad, in my mind, and I'll continue to support Google as long as they produce cool information technology and refrain from monopolistic activities.

The British Forces captured Washington, D.C. and burned the Capitol and the White House, in 1814, during the War of 1812.

Yay, law school starts again tomorrow! My courses for this first semester of my second year are:

Constitutional Law (I had a course at ND on this)
International Law (I had a course at ND on this)
Intellectual Property
Professional Responsibility
European Moot Court

Negotiations between the two competing next-gen DVD camps have failed, and it now appears that we are headed for a DVD format war.

Starting possibly as early as this Christmas season, Toshiba's HD-DVD and Sony's Blu-ray DVDs will start appearing on store shelves. To the consumer, both formats offer pretty much the same promise: sharper video at much higher resolutions, for high definition TV sets and computer monitors.

Today's DVDs are just on the edge of having enough quality at regular resolutions, with some movies still looking subpar, but blown up to the HD resolution, they look noisy and grainy. The new DVDs can hold numerous times the information and thus can support higher resolutions.

Each camp claims prominent technology and film companies' support.

So the question I ask is this: why should anyone buy DVD's right now, particularly a college student with modest to no income? If you buy a regular DVD right now, you know it won't look very good on the new large TVs and there will be a better version soon. But why buy one of the new competing DVD formats either? Pick the wrong one and you're screwed eventually.

The industry pulls crap like this and the wonder why some people pirate their movies...

All of DC's readers are going to hell... 8 comments on the football post; 0 comments on the pope post. :-)

Since nobody seems to care about my pope column, I'll move to a topic bound to perk the attention of DC's readers: an ND football season prediction.

Of course, this year, making such a prediction is to maneuver myself into the murky waters of the unknown, with ND getting a new head coach and with our opponents being particularly cagey this year.

Nevertheless, while the murk entails great danger to the predictor, he who can see through it clearly will be acclaimed at the end... So without further delay:

- Pittsburgh @ Pittsburgh = ND wins: This is going to be an extremely tough first game test for Weis and the boys... Pitt is a program on the upswing over the last few years and they are returning 15 of their starters. However, ND is going to be very hungry and Weis will be more prepared than pretty much any other coach in Div I.

- Michigan @ Michigan = ND loses: Another tough one. Michigan also returns 15 and like Pitt, it went to a BCS bowl last year. Mich is ranked 3rd in ESPN's Power 16. This is going to be an enjoyable game to watch, but Lloyd Carr gets his teams up for big games at the Big House.

- Michigan State @ ND = ND wins: MSU is not at its best and ND will be hungry in their home-opener.

- Washington @ Washington = ND wins: Returning 18 starters, and now with Ty Willingham, Wash is going to be better than their 1-10 record of last season, but not enough better.

- Purdue @ Purdue = ND wins: Purdue is a program that's been consistently good recently, but not great. However, they are returning 20 starters (11 on defense!) and are going to be confident against ND. Yet, Purdue's defense was not very impressive last year, and Weis's offense, which is returning 10 starters, will be much better than our offense was last year. It's going to come down to how Purdue's QB plays, but I'm calling an ND victory. Purdue will not earn their #13 on ESPN's Power 16. [btw, ND's band is much better than PU's even if they do have that silly large bass drum.]

- USC @ ND = ND loses: I hate to call a loss against USC, but they're going to be great again. ND's only shot at winning this game will be if we come into it undefeated or with only 1 loss, and a ton of confidence.

- BYU @ ND = ND wins: Weis will not repeat the joke of ND losing to the polygamists... And people ask why Willingham was fired after 3 seasons?? Come on.

- Tennessee @ ND - ND wins: Tenn. returns 15 starters and is ranked 6th in ESPN's Power 16. It's at ND, however, and ND is going to have confidence from a strong season up until this point. Tennessee's lack of discipline in its athletic programs could bring it down. ND comes out on top.

- Navy @ ND - ND wins: One of these years Navy's curse in playing us will come to an end. I'm not going to ever have the guts to call it.

- Syracuse @ ND - ND wins: A midlevel Big East team at home... ND pulls it out easily.

- Stanford @ Stanford - ND wins: ND's cockiness at this point in the season could be a liability for an upset, but Weis's team won't lose the ones they shouldn't, unlike TW did.


So that yields a 9-2 season and a probable BCS bowl. Not bad for Charlie's first season at Our Mother's university. But with a schedule as difficult as ND's, we'll just have to wait and watch it play out.

People across the world, and Catholics in particular, are surely observing our new pope, Benedict XVI, with great scrutiny. He walks in the footsteps of the widely acclaimed John Paul II, the victor over Communism, the ecumenical, the world traveler, and the only pope many have ever known.

He guides his flock, billions in size, and the decisions he makes impact not only Catholicism, but all of Christianity, and indeed the entire world. He leads in a time that many see as a watershed in the history of the world's faith-- a sentiment he not only shares but actively promotes. The battle, as he and others frame it, is faith versus secularism, and the current battleground is Europe where faith has been on the decline.

Thus it is in this scrutinizing perspective that we observe his actions and words at World Youth Day 2005, in Cologne, Germany. And what might we be seeing?

Early indications are that Benedict is following John Paul's example. He recognizes the importance of preaching to the youth, assembling over 1 million of them for this year's world youth day, in the heart of Europe, no less. He also announced that the next WYD will be in Sidney, Australia in 2008, showing that he is willing to travel the world. Furthermore, like his predecessor, he is multilingual, though even more impressively so-- speaking French, English, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Swahili, Tagalog and German at World Youth Day 2005.

Finally, Benedict is continuing John Paul II's ecumenical outreach, meeting with Jewish leaders in a synagogue and Muslim leaders in Cologne over the last week.

But what is our new pope's message? His words at WYD form a natural extension of his tour de force homily given before the Cardinals entered the conclave to eventually elect him pope: the triumph of the human ego is not the greatest aspiration of mankind.

In front of the WYD crowd he said, "Freedom is not simply about enjoying life in total autonomy, but rather about living by the measure of truth and goodness so that we ourselves can become true and good."

And while John Paul II stood up to Communism in Europe, may Benedict XVI have a similar foe? Initially, the answer is yes, and that foe is terrorism. While meeting with the Muslim leaders, Benedict invoked history to condemn committing violence in God's name:

"How many pages of history record battles and even wars that have been waged, with both sides invoking the name of God, as if fighting and killing the enemy could be pleasing to Him? The recollection of these sad events should fill us with shame, for we know only too well what atrocities have been committed in the name of religion."

Benedict also stated that Christians and Muslims must work together to end the scourge of terrorism which "plunges our brothers and sisters into despair." And just as John Paul taught that people under Communist rule must stand up for freedom, Benedict is teaching that Muslims must stand up against radicalism in their religion to win the ideological struggle.

"Teaching is the vehicle through which ideas and convictions are transmitted. Words are highly influential in the education of the mind. You, therefore, have a great responsibility for the formation of the younger generation," he told the assembled Muslim leaders.

So we have seen this pope's first steps, and we will eventually know his path. If all goes well, the next pope will have equally great shoes to fill, though the challenges will likely be no less.



For more information, check out the National Catholic Reporter.

I think I know what my next reading project will be: The Wisdom of the Crowds

The Space Shuttle made it home safe and sound... but the program is grounded until NASA engineers figure out problems with the foam that have persisted.

That glorious time of the year known as football season is upon us, and that makes Lucas a happy boy.

I follow and cheer for three teams-- Roncalli High School, where I was a former player, the University of Notre Dame, my alma mater, and the Indianapolis Colts.

Roncalli won their home opener last night, starting off my teams' combined records at 1-0.

So, China has organized new squads of quasi-soldiers to roam their biggest cities. The squads will be armed with helicopters and armored vehicles. China has labeled the squads "anti-terror" but their real function, of course, as evidenced by statements of Chinese officials, is to curtail protests and riots and to increase the stranglehold that the unelected government has over the people.

But the Public Security Bureau, the mainstream policing body, has in practice been forced to handle an increasing number of incidents of domestic unrest and under a powerful minister, Zhou Yongkang, may have been able to make a case for funds for a new force.

"The new squads are aimed at improving the ability of the police to handle terrorist crimes, riots and other emergencies," said a statement on Xinhua, the official news agency.

Mr Zhou said the authorities dealt with 74,000 protests and riots nationwide last year, involving more than 3.7m people, compared with 10,000 incidents in 1994.

[thanks to Brian for the link to the story]

Conservative Angie Merkel is leading liberal Gerhard Schroeder 42 to 28 in recent opinion polls. Schroeder is gaining some ground, but I'm predicting conservatives take back Deutschland. This would give the U.S. a stronger ally in the heart of Europe.

[thanks to Dan Ornelas for the link]

This column by David Brooks is a bit old, but its points are right on. He shows empathy with American workers who are bound to hold some contempt towards illegal immigrants, when they are struggling finding jobs themselves. Then he shows reason in saying that we need a 2-fold solution to the illegal immigration problem: make it easier to gain legal recognition and citizenship, and greatly strengthen enforcement.

I'll add a third: put pressure on the Mexican government to stop aiding in the breach of our border. This WashTimes article explains how the their government is directly aiding illegal immigration.

I'm hereby kicking the DrudgeReport out of my blogroll. It's not his content... it's as sensational and relevant as always... it's the ads.

His site now produces multiple pop-up ads, including ones that FireFox's pop-up blocking can't stop. He also occasionally runs an ad at the top that is a MOVIE with sound. And then just tonight, when I visited his site, it tried to download an .exe file. I'm done and through, and I refuse to support that kind of site.

In the meantime, check out Sploid which is a graphically rich but content poor version of Drudge, while I try to find a better replacement.

I was listening to the show "Marketplace" on NPR this morning, a habit I probably should not make, and I heard a commentary segment by Robert Reich.

The segment regarded guns in the workplace, and apparently some businesses in Kansas (and probably elsewhere) passed company rules forbidding employees from bringing firearms onto company property. According to Reich, some studies have shown that businesses in states that allow concealed firearms see a greater incidence of gun violence in the workplace.

Anyways, employees in Kansas protested these corporate rules, and the Kansas legislature responded by banning such corporate rules, in order to ensure that Kansans may bring guns to work if they so choose.

The companies have already begun their challenge of the law in the courts, in what looks to be an interesting case that pits 2nd amendment gun rights against property rights.

The courts have been pretty weak in defending either set of rights, so this case could go either way, I think.

Personally, I'm leaning towards the companies' side on this one. Companies have a strong interest in maintaining a safe and productive work environment, and that should include a right to ban firearms on their property.

But Reich, the socialist that he is, did not seem happy with letting the courts settle this one. No, he wanted the federal government to step in, via OSHA, and create a regulation banning firearms across the nation in the workplace, even in states that would allow it. This would be done in the guise of workplace safety, even though OSHA was never conceived to deal with issues like this.

This notion is untrue, according to recent surveys by the University of Chicago and Rice University. Rice's survey also shows that a scientist's likelihood of believing in God corresponds to their field, with social scientists believing in God more often than natural scientists.

People who claim that scientific theories should not be trusted, because scientists are just a bunch of atheists, need to go back to the drawing board and find a better argument.

Update: "Evangelical scientists refute gravity with new 'intelligent falling' theory"

This little bit of news, though probably irrelevant to non-Domers, will be greatly appreciated by ND students and fellow alumni.

CJ's Pub, the home of the best burger this side of... ummm... Indiana, will reopen in time for the football season. This is quite a feat for a building which had another building fall literally on top of it earlier this summer.

When it comes to the size of search sites' databases, bigger is most certainly better. To this end, search giants Yahoo! and Google have been debating each other who has the larger database.

Yahoo! claims a database with over twice the number of site listings, however Google says their numbers are artificially inflated with duplicate and broken listings. Real world testing by multiple parties has tended to show that Google actually has around 50% more hits on a random search.

Please refer to this highly technical graphic:

So says this this bitter guy.

I think he should watch The Stepford Wives..

Bush has made history by going an entire five (5!) years without vetoing a single piece of legislation.

This is bad. The American process works best if the branches have some conflict. Instead, the trend in 20th century American government is a president who acts as a super-legislator who guides the congress to push his agenda. This is true, of course, only when the President and a majority of Congress are both of the same party.

What results is a political system where too much attention and too much scrutiny are given to one man's policy ideas rather than the wisdom of numerous men, sometimes in a collective form.

The headline, "Man Outed on Radio Show to Receive $270K," pretty much says it all.

This dude got a phone call from a guy he met at a gay bar several months back. The call was played live on a radio station, thus outing the man who had chosen to hide his homosexual orientation-- even from family.

Because he "suffered" emotional distress, he had to quit his job and he was awarded $270,000 in compensation by an arbitrator, against the radio station. Only $20,000 of that award was pecuniary, the rest for emotional upset.

I'm sorry, but while I think it is wrong to out somebody who is in the closet, I do not think the emotional harm is worth $250,000.

Think about it. You get your feelings hurt and embarrassed in front of some of your friends and coworkers and suddenly you deserve the same amount as 8 journalists makes in a year combined, or 2 lawyers make in a year combined?

Btw, maybe it's ridiculous verdicts like this that allow torts lawyers to make that much...

I have updated my blogroll, removing a couple defunct sites and adding a few new blogs by DC readers/commenters.

I added GetReligion.org which is about religion and the media's coverage of it. Check out this nice post by Dan Pulliam about how the American media handles religious controversy versus how Muslim papers handle it.

I also added a weblog out of Jilin, China, run by Brian, who is a Catholic priest and radio talkshow host there. The blog offers great thoughts on religion and public policy as well as posts by local Chinese students which give perspective on Christianity and its role in Chinese culture.

Finally, I added The Fanatic's Forum, a site run by a fellow Hoosier, which offers insightful quotes and issues of public interest. I really liked this quote at the top of his site:

"The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it." -Henry David Thoreau

I just switched Daily Contentions to a new server-- away from IU's webserver and to a free webhosting service run out of Canada. Since all has gone smoothly, you shouldn't notice one difference at all.

Just remember to always link DC using the http://www.dailycontentions.com domain, and not the mypage.iu.edu/... address.

I'm having a small issue with permalinks and archive links, but I expect Blogger to resolve it soon.

So why did I switch? Simple. IU gave me 20 MB of space and this new service gives me 750. Also, IU blocked Google from indexing my page, which cost me numerous hits a week and overall made my site less visible to the net. It also broke my cool search feature in the site's upper right hand corner. Once I'm sure Google is successfully indexing DC, I'll put the search feature back up.

-lds

update: permalinks and archive links fixed... my error, not Blogger's

The PC police are at it again, and this time, the casualties are 18 American universities.

The NCAA executive committee (14 white men, 2 white women, and 3 black men) has decided that the mascots of these schools, all of which have Native American names, are "hostile and abusive to Indians. "

Among the most noteable casualities of this decision are the Florida State Seminoles, named after a regional Indian tribe. Of course, the diligent folks over at the NCAA didn't bother to ask the Seminoles for their opinion. The Seminole Tribal Council voted in April to support FSU's use of the Seminole mascot, unanimously. But of course, in typical liberal condescending fashion, the members of the executive committee assumed that they know better than Seminoles what is offensive to their tribe.

I suppose now we Notre Dame fans should live in fear, lest the NCAA decide that our mascot offends the millions of Americans of Irish descent. Sound ridiculous? Well, from a historical perspective, a case can certainly be made that the Irish also suffered through decades of discrimination and maltreatment, whether it was back in Europe or in the NINA shops of America.

You can read a superb op-ed on the topic here. I won't reprint the whole thing, but what follows are some highlights.

" Also banned is the nickname of the University of Illinois -- the Illini. "Illini" was the name of the tribal confederation that once ruled the land now called Illinois. It is the root word for the state name and the name of its people, Illinoians. It is hard to see hostility in a name the white people use to describe themselves, but the NCAA sees it.

University of Illinois basketball jerseys say "Illinois," not "Illini." In its eternal wisdom, the executive committee will allow jerseys printed with "Illinois," but not ones printed with "Illini." What will committee members do when they learn that "Illinois" is French for "Illini"?

Indiana University, whose athletic teams are called "Hoosiers," escaped the NCAA's nickname ban. But Indiana's jerseys don't say "Hoosiers." They say "Indiana," which means "Land of Indians." By the way, the NCAA is headquartered in Indianapolis -- "City of the Land of Indians." How embarrassing.

The University of Oklahama's football team wears jerseys sporting the university's team nickname: Sooners. Sooners were people who illegally occupied land confiscated from the Indians. (They got there "sooner" than the law allowed.) The university's basketball team wears jerseys bearing the state name: Oklahoma. "Oklahoma" is Choctaw for "red people." Both of these names are OK, while "Seminoles," approved by the tribe, is banned. Go figure."