SAN FRANCISCO show-and-tell.

The lights on the suspension cables of the western side of one of the busiest bridges in the world are just for decoration, not for navigation safety or whatever. They sure make a big difference to the look of San Francisco at night when they are turned off.

Question: Turning off these decorative lights for an hour saves enough electricity to power Al Gore’s house (his actual house, not his San Francisco condo SOMA that’s visible on the right) for how many minutes?

Answer: About 13 minutes. Let’s work on that math, after the jump.

Amusing.

DAVE HARDY: “Who’d ever have dreamed that someday the two leading Democratic presidential candidates would be claiming they supported the Second Amendment individual right? . . . I’ve been involved in this issue for decades, and so have a long term view. It’s been steadily downhill for the other side.”

BITES FROM THE APPLE: A roundup of Apple news. Mac Minis as substitutes for Apple TV, MacBook Air as a Windows machine, and replacing those boring flag lapel pins with Apple-key lapel pins!

SCARY MCCAIN.

AND YET THE PLAN SEEMED FOOLPROOF:

A pizza deliveryman told Des Moines police that he shot a man who robbed him at gunpoint when he delivered a pie late Thursday to a south-side address.

The alleged assailant, Kenneth Jimmerson, 19, was taken to Mercy Medical Center in serious condition. He was charged this morning with first-degree robbery and will be taken to Polk County Jail when released from the hospital, police said.

Melanie Stout, 18, the woman who placed the order for the pizzas, was charged with conspiracy to commit robbery.

Pizza delivery guys are doing God’s work. People who try to rob them deserve to be shot. Meanwhile, Pizza Hut has suspended the driver.

UPDATE: Thoughts from Dr. Weevil.

MORE ON OBAMA’S SELF-INVENTION: Obama keeps bending space and time regarding his biographical details, which is a problem for a guy who’s made his biography such a centerpiece of his campaign.

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Women Push Back in Support of Clinton: “Amid mounting calls from top Democrats for Clinton to step aside and clear the path for rival Barack Obama, strategists are warning of damage to the party’s chances in November if women – who make up the majority of Democratic voters nationwide, but especially the older, white working-class women who’ve long formed the former first lady’s base – sense a mostly male party establishment is unfairly muscling Clinton out of the race.”

IF TRUE, THIS IS UPSETTING: Amazon Insists Publishers Use Their On-Demand Printer. More here.

We’re certainly seeing Amazon move outside its traditional role as distributor and retailer.

Much, much more on this subject at The Daily Brief.

LAST WEEK WHEN I POSTED ON LAWYER THREAT LETTERS AS EXTORTION, I should have linked to this post at Simple Justice, too.

ZIMBABWE UPDATE: Mugabe apparently faces major defeat in Zimbabwe. Only if he runs out of fake ballots.

UPDATE: “Robert Mugabe’s Defeat Cannot Be Covered Up.” Plus, in South Africa, “Our Silence Is Deafening.” And, from The Guardian’s Chris McGreal in Harare: “Mugabe clings on despite election defeat.”

HILLARY: Not quitting.

A DIARIST AT MYDD IMAGINES general-election attack ads against Obama. “If we choose Obama as our nominee, we are locked-in to this narrative. There is no going back, no bogus NBC polls to save the day. No Anderson Cooper softball interviews or phony charges of racism that will rescue us.” Their mashup doesn’t quite ring true to me, but I suspect it will create a stir among Democrats.

UPDATE: Editorial suggestions.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ed Morrissey: “It’s interesting to note that MyDD employed 9/11 footage that even the networks haven’t used for years — namely, the people jumping to their deaths in the minutes before the collapse. We finally get to see that again, and only in the context of one Democratic blogger attacking a Democratic candidate. . . . The ‘GOP will use it’ argument simply serves as a dodge for an attack on Obama over the Wright Stuff.”

MORE: Via the comments at the MyDD post — where the Obama backers are quite upset — here’s another homemade anti-Obama ad, though I’m not sure of its provenance. But it’s already gotten 439,000 views.

STILL MORE: An email from a guy who says he’s the MyDD diarist. Click “read more” to read it. And a reader sends this bit of lefty unhappiness with Obama, too.

EDWARDS PRAISES BOTH CLINTON AND OBAMA: Interesting photo. (Via Internet Scofflaw).

THIS IS A BIT AWKWARD: “The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit confirmed Thursday the entire Detroit office has been recused from the Al-Hanooti case, but officials would not say why. The case is instead being handled by government lawyers from Washington, D.C. The indictment alleges that an ex-Iraqi Intelligence Service officer asked a former official with the Life for Relief — Muthanna Al-Hanooti — to publicize the damage of U.S. sanctions. As part of that, the indictment alleges, Al-Hanooti helped organize a trip to Iraq by a congressional delegation. Al-Hanooti allegedly received a potentially lucrative oil contract from Saddam’s regime in return for his services.”

A MICKEY KAUS NIGHTMARE? Only if the shirts are designed by Chris Bangle.

A MISTAKE:

A boy in his mid-teens learned Wednesday afternoon that it is not a good idea to try to rob a former U.S. Marine at knifepoint, even if the former Marine is 84 years old, police said today.

Santa Rosa police Sgt. Steve Bair said that’s what happened around 2 p.m. in the 1600 block of Fourth Street. The elderly man was walking with a grocery bag in each arm when the boy approached him with a large knife, Bair said.

The boy said, “Old man, give me your wallet or I’ll cut you,” Bair said. The man told the boy he was a former Marine who fought in three wars and had been threatened with knives and bayonets, Bair said.

The man then put his bags on the ground and told the boy that if he stepped closer he would be sorry. When the boy stepped closer, the man kicked him in the groin, knocking him to the sidewalk, Bair said. The ex-Marine picked up his grocery bags and walked home, leaving the boy doubled over, Bair said.

Perhaps this will divert the young man from a life of crime.

UPDATE: Okay, the story says he’s a Marine, but this video has him as an alumnus of the 101st Airborne. Since he’s wearing a Screaming Eagles hat, I think that’s likely to be right. Do reporters not know the difference?

JOE LIEBERMAN: “I say that the Democratic Party changed. The Democratic Party today was not the party it was in 2000. It’s not the Bill Clinton-Al Gore party, which was strong internationalists, strong on defense, pro-trade, pro-reform in our domestic government. It’s been effectively taken over by a small group on the left of the party that is protectionist, isolationist and basically will –and very, very hyperpartisan. So it pains me. I’m a Democrat who came to the party in the era of President John F. Kennedy. It’s a strange turn of the road when I find among the candidates running this year that the one, in my opinion, closest to the Kennedy legacy, the John F. Kennedy legacy, is John S. McCain.”

Related thoughts here.

STOP-LOSS ORDERS: Saving vets from the hellish civilian economy!

“A DAD IS MORE THAN A PAYCHECK.” Indeed.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Jacob Sullum writes:

On Friday March 21, a House Appropriations Committee Web site was so overwhelmed by legislators’ wish lists that it crashed, forcing the committee to extend the deadline for earmark requests until Monday. Most members of Congress seem to think the problem with earmarks is like the problem with the committee’s server: not any particular person’s demands, just all of them together. . . .

On the face of it, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, and the two remaining contenders for the Democratic nomination, Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, take a different view: All three supported a one-year moratorium on earmarks that the Senate recently rejected by a wide margin. But only Mr. McCain has taken a principled stand against the pet projects that legislators love to slip into spending bills.

“We Republicans came to power in 1994 to change government,” Mr. McCain told the Riverside, Calif., Press Enterprise last year, “and the government changed us. That’s why we lost the election: We began to value power over principle.”

Well, he’s got that right.

FIVE WEB RESOURCES FOR TRAVEL.

JERRY POURNELLE thinks that things are going to get tougher for writers:

Borders is up for sale, and Barnes and Noble are in trouble. Just the kind of news one needs to hear. The independent book stores have been pretty well finished off, with very few left and those mostly in trouble. Now the giants which have been in ruthless competition. And there’s still a great deal of fallout from the Sears / Kmart debacles.

We do live in interesting times. Authors may well have no choice but to build a stable of loyal Patrons/subscribers to assure themselves of enough income to be able to do large projects. Or be born with trust funds. In the 40’s, a sale to the Saturday Evening Post brought Stuart Cloete enough money — $4,000 for a short story, think about $35,000 now or what a short TV script brings — to let him write a novel. But that was back then when the Post was important. Now there’s nothing like that except in TV and you don’t get in over the transom.

Book advances keep falling. There’s still money in journalism and general science, but the computer magazines are thinner every issue.

Well, book advances aren’t falling for everybody. Politicians seem to do fine, as Deval Patrick just scored a $1.35 million book advance. People used to write books to advance their political careers. Now, it seems, you become a politician to ensure a hefty advance for your writing. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Various readers think I’m not being obvious enough in pointing out that fat book contracts can be a way of circumventing campaign finance laws, etc. Yes they can! And reader Lee Willis emails:

I remember reading once that many science fiction authors like writing short stories, but it was difficult for them to find a market to sell them. One either has to package a collection of short stories as a book, or get the short-story published in a magazine.

This may no longer be true, b/c of the Amazon Kindle. You can buy individual short stories from Amazon for a buck or two. This may create a new market for short stories, which don’t have to bundled with a book or magazine.

Good point. I don’t know how much you get per reader via the Kindle, but an author with a following could self-publish and keep it all, I imagine.

SHEILA JACKSON LEE booed by Obama backers.

SADR BLINKS: “Six days after the Iraqi government launched Operation Knights’ Charge in Basrah against the Mahdi Army and other Iranian-backed Shia terror groups, Muqtada al Sadr, the Leader of the Mahdi Army, has called for his fighters to lay down their weapons and cooperate with Iraqi security forces. Sadr’s call for an end to the fighting comes as his Mahdi Army has taken serious losses since the operation began. . . . Since the fighting began on Tuesday 358 Mahdi Army fighters were killed, 531 were wounded, 343 were captured, and 30 surrendered. The US and Iraqi security forces have killed 125 Mahdi Army fighters in Baghdad alone, while Iraqi security forces have killed 140 Mahdi fighters in Basra.” But it’s likely a blink, not a major defeat.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey: Remind me again — who’s losing in Basra? “Did our media give anyone this context? No. They reported it as some kind of spontaneous eruption of rebellion without noting at all that a nation can hardly be considered sovereign while its own security forces cannot enter a large swath of its own territory. And in the usual defeatist tone, they reported that our mission in Iraq had failed without waiting to see what the outcome of the battle would be.” No surprise there — that’s what they do every time.

MORE: Heh: “The speed at which the MSM went from ignoring Iraq to proclaiming that we were losing was actually pretty impressive. I didn’t know they could move that fast any more. But when they had to back up their narrative of our loss with facts like ‘230 people have died in Iraq because of this latest battle’ (not saying where those 230 people were or which side they were on) I knew that the good guys were winning.” It’s like deciphering coverage in the old Soviet newspapers.

BATTLING EDS: Ed Cone says Ed Morrissey is wrong about the media coverage. But one of Cone’s commenters disagrees. The NPR coverage I’ve heard was of a similar tone, though I do remember thinking the other day that if this was an effort to stage a Tet it was failing, because NPR spent more time on a story about contaminated Mozzarella in Italy than on the fighting in Iraq.

STILL MORE: Media criticism from Abu Muqawama.

MORE STILL: The Mudville Gazette: “Few have noticed that this round of fighting – the heaviest occurring in Basra and reportedly with flare ups primarily in the Iraqi-controlled southern provinces – is a fair approximation of what both Democratic Presidential candidates (and most everyone else in America from the President on down) desire for a future US military role in Iraq – providing a support function to Iraqi combat troops. Within the next week we’ll have some idea of how close to reality that goal is.”

Plus, comments from Dean Esmay.

AND MORE: Reader Thomas Wictor suggests that this video explains why Sadr backed down:

Intense firefight in Sadr City in a raid conducted by Iraqi and Coalition special forces. It appears that most of the vehicles and troops are Iraqis.

Don’t let all the pundits and analysts fool you: the JAM is now seriously outgunned by the Iraqi security forces.

Given this level of firepower, do you really think Maliki would “cave in” to al Sadr the way the media is spinning it?

The whole video is shot in Infrared, and it’s interesting how you can see the targeting lasers all over. Michael Yon was just telling me about that the other day, but this is the first time I’ve seen it.

DARFUR UPDATE: “The Arab League is under increasing pressure from Moslem organizations, to pressure Sudan to stop the atrocities in Darfur. The Arab League has defended Sudan to the world, accusing critics of being anti-Moslem. But many Moslems know better, and are appalled at the suffering of the Moslem victims of Sudan’s ethnic cleansing program in Sudan.”