Funny, she doesn’t look Jewish.

Comments Off

Every week, Robert Samuelson writes a new column for Newsweek and its sister publication, The Washington Post, and every week it seems, I link to it. Today is no exception. Read:

Finally, China’s economy could grow so rapidly that it requires more imports. Unfortunately, just the opposite may happen. China’s present boom may be unsustainable. Credit is exploding. Loans are expected to grow by 3.6 trillion renminbi this year — equal to a third of gross domestic product, Lardy says. He foresees defaults and excess industrial capacity. Economist John Makin of the American Enterprise Institute — speaking at an AEI seminar — warned of a China “bubble.”

What Samuelson doesn’t mention is how much China today sounds like Japan in 1990. Huge trade surpluses with the United States, endemic corruption in the banking system, and a serious problem with excess capacity.

There are also important differences between the two countries, ones which might make a prolonged Chinese deflationary spiral unlikely. On the other hand, there’s this pair of differences: Japan’s history of warlordism is far in its past, and Japan never had nukes.

Japan has survived a decade-plus of slow- or no-growth, because they have a wealthy populace, already long comfortable with democracy and safe under the protection of American might.

The chances of China surviving whole more than a couple years of hard times is unlikely at best, and the results could be a global catastrophe.

Comments Off

If I did what this guy does, the only person left in my blogroll would be. . . uh. . . me.

UPDATE: Andy has also posted a review of The Matrix: Reloaded, but unfortunately, he only once mentions Monica Belucci’s fabled chest.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Andy has added a picture to make up for it.

Comments Off

I’m mostly bored with the news again, so it’s time to drag out another old saw from the Tales from Wasted Lives.

Today’s story is Cooking Vodka.

You’ve heard of cooking wine, cooking sherry, and cooking brandy, but only Dave could have come up with cooking vodka. “Cooking vodka” doesn’t mean you cook with the precious; it means you cook while imbibing the precious.

My old buddy Dave was running the upstairs, fine dining restaurant at Harrah’s Tahoe way back when, and shared a mountain bachelor pad with his sommelier, Jay. With the market pretty much cornered on the best food and wine in Tahoe, and an endless series of cocktail waitresses from which to choose (I think Dave married at least a couple of them, however briefly), Dave and Jay were the twin terrors of the town.

So one night the boys brought home a couple new young ladies, and as always, prepared to seduce them with food and drink. If I recall correctly, D & J planned to make veal tornadoes with shiitake mushrooms in a Marsala sauce. After he moved to Colorado

Comments Off

My bride will never understand why I need one of these.

Comments Off

Anne Applebaum:

In Bangkok this week, President Bush used long words — multiparty talks, security guarantees, long-range missiles — to discuss the problem of North Korea with North Korea’s neighbors. Here in Washington, on the other side of the globe, a small organization called the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea will today use pictures to discuss the problem of North Korea with anyone who wants to listen. The pictures that the committee has procured — and now published, together with a report called “The Hidden Gulag” — are satellite photographs of North Korean concentration camps. With remarkable clarity they show, for example, the contours of Yodok, one of the most notorious prison camps in North Korea: the barracks and “villages” inhabited by different categories of prisoners, including political prisoners; the mines, the flour mill, the farms where prisoners work; the cemetery. They also show the outlines of Bukchang, another vast camp, including its cement factory, its hospital, its punishment barracks, its school for prisoners’ children. Distinct objects, including the high walls that enclose the camps, are clearly visible.

The rest of it is today’s Required Reading.

Comments Off

Here’s the above-the-mast teaser from Drudge:

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have concluded a secret agreement on “nuclear cooperation” that will provide the Saudis with nuclear-weapons technology in exchange for cheap oil, the WASHINGTON TIMES will report on Wednesday, sources tell DRUDGE… Developing Hard…

I’m not normally one to defend the Saudis — and I won’t today. Not quite.

Before you go off thinking the Haus of Saud wants a bomb to sneak into, say, midtown Manhattan, think instead about their more immediate threat. If the Saudis want nukes (and I don’t doubt they do) the US is, at the most, their secondary target. Iran is the traditional Arab enemy, for reasons both racial and religious. And if the Saudis are willing to risk our temper, then my concern is less about the Saudis having a bomb (although that does worry me), than about how close the Iranians are to getting a few.

Something to think about.

Comments Off

If you’re going to take a day off the blog to enjoy the fine weather, it helps ease the conscience to know the site was down, anyway.

Yes, HostingMatters suffered another DoS attack yesterday, thanks probably to an al Qaeda affiliate.

Dan Darling at Winds of Change thinks the two attacks in less than a week are just a taste of things to come:

The fact that they’ve decided to expand their hacking campaign to war bloggers may mean that their supporters or whatever crude cyber-terrorists are actually working for the organization are testing the waters to see what they can do (let’s face it, they can use bloggers as guinea pigs fairly easily without any fear of the authorities) and eliminate what could best be described as their ideological opponents in the process.

Joe Katzman, who runs Winds of Change, sent me the following in an email:

Welcome back to the blogosphere, and congratulations. The enemy took the war to our online homes, and you had the privilege of being there on the firing line.

If the warblogs are a frontline, let’s at least be honest — we’re not even a tertiary front. I’m flattered by Joe’s thoughts, but it’s silly to think that what bloggers do will have any significant impact on the war. Or that DoS attacks on us will, either.

What I do find heartening is this: If al Qaeda-sympathizing hackers are wasting their time on blogs, then they aren’t spending their time more “productively” attacking the Pentagon. Or worse.

Comments Off

Another busy day — and the unseasonably warm weather is just too nice to stay inside during those few free minutes.

Back tonight.

Comments Off

Sunday was a busy one, and Monday is going to be even worse.

So instead of the usual blogging, just a collection of links to the day’s most interesting news:

Battlefield lasers — Practicality and doctrine.

Clark and Lieberman will skip Iowa.

Fred Hiatt on the unexpected problems in postwar Iraq.

Homosexuality — not a choice?

Newt Gingrich – of all people – finds that Wesley Clark (surprise!) doesn’t agree with Wesley Clark.

Howard Kurtz looks at the Bush-haters.

Full-time peacekeepers.

Last chance to re-fi the house?

If you thought California voters were angry, wait’ll you read about Bolivia.

Osama — caught in the flypaper.

Discuss amongst yourselves. I should be back in the afternoon.

Comments Off

I told you things were good here in Colorado.

Comments Off

The Law of 14.

Comments Off

Go wish Sheila O’Malley a happy one-year blogoversary.

Comments Off

This kind of thing is all-too typical, but that’s still no excuse.

Comments Off

Nelson Ascher forwarded this AP report:

French President Jacques Chirac blocked the European Union from ending a two-day summit Friday with a harshly worded statement condemning Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s remarks about Jews a day earlier.

Backed by Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis, officials said, Chirac objected to a few short sentences in a 19-page summit statement deploring Mahathir’s comment at an Islamic leaders summit that “Jews rule the world by proxy.”

Foreign ministers Thursday night had drafted a text that said: “His unacceptable comments hinder all our efforts to further interethnic and religious harmony, and have no place in a decent world. Such false and anti-Semitic remarks are as offensive to Muslims as they are to others.”

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told reporters Thursday night Mahathir’s remarks were “gravely offensive.”

But when the paper was handed to EU leaders Friday morning, Chirac said there was no place in an EU declaration for a text of this kind, diplomats said. Other leaders agreed, although the Netherlands wanted the wording to stay in the declaration.

Doesn’t Chirac realize that the Nazi Occupation is long over? He can quit collaborating already.

Comments Off

Tell me if this shocks you.

Comments Off

Getting a tooth filling is bad enough. But when they have to replace one. . . well, you get twice the torture just to stay even. It’s like treading water with weights on your ankles.

The damn thing popped out

Comments Off

Jeebus, people. Not only is your team the Sox, but they were playing the Yankees, fer crissakes.

What’d you expect?

Going to extra innings in Game Seven was as good as it was gonna get.

PS Steinbrenner still sucks, you know.

Comments Off

This is the fourth in a series of small lessons I’ve learned. These little tips will seem pretty obvious to anyone who’s used to investing, but might prove useful to others.

Today’s Tip: Don’t Day Trade.

You remember when day-trading was cool, back during the Great Bubble three-four years ago. Those guys (almost always guys) taking and leaving tips on all the busy busy busy stock chat rooms and message boards, when a “hold” recommendation meant “don’t sell it until at least 3:30.

Yeah, some of them made money. Most of them were hustlers. And probably all of them got ulcers.

All I can say is: Don’t.

Comments Off

I don’t know what happened last night, but every HostMatters hosted blog was down for several hours.

If the lack of new blog entries caused you any hardship — lost sleep, lack of appetite, frightened children, worried spouses, etc. — then all I can do is recommend you avoid the Internet for at least three weeks.

Comments Off

I don’t actually know any Italian recipes, I just keep adding stuff until things taste the way I remember them from all those great little restaurants on The Hill back in St. Louis.

This week’s recipe is a winter classic at our house, and probably yours, too. Difference is, we make it from scratch. It’s

Comments Off

I know it’s hard not to have fun in Hawaii, but this is ridiculous.

(Ed. Note: “Ridiculous?” Poor word choice.)

Comments Off

You take off for a month and just come back unannounced? Who do you think you are — me?

Seriously, though: Welcome back, Bill.

Comments Off

Juan Gato explores the dangers posed by genetically modified foods — to the people opposed to them, I think.

Comments Off

Sometime a couple days ago, VodkaPundit passed 1.3 million visitors. And sometime this morning, the site delivered its two-millionth page view.

I guess if I’ve contributed anything to the blogosphere, it’s that you can disappear for a week or more at a time and still keep most of your audience.

Comments Off

Eric Raymond discusses why some Christian leaders prefer Palestinian terrorists to the US-led removal of Saddam Hussein:

A clue to the problem is that though the U.S. is demographically a mostly Christian nation, the effect of U.S. cultural hegemony is a secularizing one. American popular culture severs the bonds of fear and ignorance that hold people unquestioningly to their ancestral relgions. The American vision of each individual as an autonomous being who derives his rights from his humanness, from the simple fact of his capacity to assert them, is deadly antithetical to any religious tradition that vests moral authority in a transcendant God.

But like any of Eric’s essays, you should really read the whole thing.

Comments Off

Blogger Jon Walz scored an interview with B-movie icon Bruce Campbell. Joe Bob says, check it out.

Comments Off