Can anyone be nominated as Chief Justice, or does one have to be an Associate Justice first?

Andrew Lloyd points out that Iris Chang has died, sadly, apparently by her own hand. Arafat’s death is a blessing to the world, but she will be sorely missed.

Here’s an interesting interview with Neal Stephenson over at Slashdot. My two favorite bits–first, in a discussion of the bifurcation of the writing community between those who are commercial and those who are “literary”:

Like all tricks for dividing people into two groups, this is simplistic, and needs to be taken with a grain of salt. But there is a cultural difference between these two types of writers, rooted in to whom they are accountable, and it explains what MosesJones is complaining about. Beowulf writers and Dante writers appear to have the same job, but in fact there is a quite radical difference between them—hence the odd conversation that I had with my fellow author at the writer’s conference. Because she’d never heard of me, she made the quite reasonable assumption that I was a Dante writer—one so new or obscure that she’d never seen me mentioned in a journal of literary criticism, and never bumped into me at a conference. Therefore, I couldn’t be making any money at it. Therefore, I was most likely teaching somewhere. All perfectly logical. In order to set her straight, I had to let her know that the reason she’d never heard of me was because I was famous.

But this part, about his relationship with Blue Origin was quite intriguing:

As for my visions of future private space flight: here I have to remind you of something, which is that, up to this point in the interview, I have been wearing my novelist hat, meaning that I talk freely about whatever I please. But private space flight is an area where I wear a different hat (or helmet). I do not freely disseminate my thoughts on this one topic because I have agreed to sell those thoughts to Blue Origin. Admittedly, this feels a little strange to a novelist who is accustomed to running his mouth whenever he feels like it. But it is a small price to pay for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become a minor character in a Robert Heinlein novel.

And don’t miss his description of his battles with William Gibson.

Elizabeth Edwards reportedly has been diagnosed with breast cancer. That might explain Senator Edwards’ strange “concession” speech yesterday when he introduced Senator Kerry.

My best wishes to her and her family. But I hope she can find a competent doctor who hasn’t been put out of business by her husband’s courtroom chicanery.

…who thinks that Free Republic is a blog.

Well, in that genre, he’ll have a lot more competition, but if anyone could do it, Ed Wood could.

What do actor Gary Sinise (Forrest Gump, Apollo XIII) and Seabiscuit author Laura Hillenbrand have in common?

A noble project.

[via Roger Simon]

I know, I know, I didn’t tell my three long-suffering readers that I had gone up to the Cape, but I did, this morning. Early.

Not a bad drive. Only two-and-a-half hours from north Boca.

It’s amazing how much the state changes both culturally and demographically just north of the Palm Beach/Martin County line. South lies the southern annex of New Yawk/Jersey. Italian restaurants and steak houses prevail. Seafood may be found, but generally only at the steakhouses.

North lies the south. Seafood shacks, fried stuff, barbecue, grits.

We used to say in Michigan that Detroit was the only place in the US (well, outside of Alaska) that you can look south and see Canada (go look at Detroit and Windsor, Ontario on a map). Well, Florida is the only state in the US where you have to drive north to get to the South.

It goes suddenly from quite urban to quite rural, with long stretches of nothing but swamp and pine forest–no sign of man except for the freeway itself, upon which one traverses them, up through Martin, St. Lucie and Indian River Counties. They and their suffering inhabitants were ground zero for both Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne, in the space of two weeks, only a few weeks ago. Both storms made land in almost exactly the same location, somewhere between Vero Beach and Fort Pierce.

I was surprised to see little damage. Or, I should say, I saw little damage to nature, but perhaps that’s because I’m not attuned to recognize it. The angles of the trees on the hammocks in the glades may have been altered, but I wouldn’t have known.

Man-made stuff is another matter. I saw many billboards absent both bills and boards, nothing but a frame, a skeleton, remained, appropriate for the upcoming season. Stopping for gas in Fort Pierce, I saw a Golden Arch ungilded, frame only, bereft even of the plywood upon which to place the gold, but with a stalwart handwritten sign below: “We’re Still Open.”

Had I more time, I’d have toured A1-A along the barrier islands, where I suspect the damage was both more extensive and obvious.

The Cape was in good shape, all considered. I was in a meeting at Boeing, in a conference room with a lovely view of the Indian River, and the Vehicle Assembly Building across it, off in the distance.

It looked closer than it was, as it always does, because there’s no sense of scale to indicate that it’s one of the largest buildings in the world. It lost some panels in the maelstroms, but neither of the storms were the ones that would put NASA out of the manned spaceflight business. That’s one of the reasons that the Cape was chosen for the premiere launch site. Historically, that region has been largely hurricane free, at least when it comes to Cats 3 and above. But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. They dodged two bullets this year.

I’ve complained about this before, but it continues, and it continues to irritate.

I think the president’s doing a lousy job. I think the country’s on the “wrong track.” So according to conventional wisdom, I should be voting for Kerry, right?

Wrong, because I think that he’d be even worse on most issues of concern to me. Am I weird, or are all these so-called analysts misinterpreting poll internals, mistakenly assuming that unhappiness with Bush automatically translates to a Kerry vote?

The French are arrogant, rude and surly, particularly in Paris. Imagine that.