Obviously, the media (most likely as a tag team with the Daschleites who are trying to damage Bush’s war popularity), has decided to float the “why do they hate us” trial balloon again.

Both Meet The Press and This Week featured the Gallup poll of the Arab countries that showed how disengaged from reality they are. At least Russert balanced Arab apologist Jim Zogby with Krauthammer, who made the key point, “we were the ones attacked–they should be asking themselves ‘why do they hate us?'”

This Week double teamed the issue (no balance at all), with a reporter from Al Jazeera and some guy from the Brookings Institution, who helpfully pointed out that not only does the Arab world hate us, but the rest of the world does, too.

I have just one comment. I’ll consider a Gallup poll of the Arab populace to be of greater than zero value when they perform one in an Arab country with a free press.

Obviously, the media (most likely as a tag team with the Daschleites who are trying to damage Bush’s war popularity), has decided to float the “why do they hate us” trial balloon again.

Both Meet The Press and This Week featured the Gallup poll of the Arab countries that showed how disengaged from reality they are. At least Russert balanced Arab apologist Jim Zogby with Krauthammer, who made the key point, “we were the ones attacked–they should be asking themselves ‘why do they hate us?'”

This Week double teamed the issue (no balance at all), with a reporter from Al Jazeera and some guy from the Brookings Institution, who helpfully pointed out that not only does the Arab world hate us, but the rest of the world does, too.

I have just one comment. I’ll consider a Gallup poll of the Arab populace to be of greater than zero value when they perform one in an Arab country with a free press.

Obviously, the media (most likely as a tag team with the Daschleites who are trying to damage Bush’s war popularity), has decided to float the “why do they hate us” trial balloon again.

Both Meet The Press and This Week featured the Gallup poll of the Arab countries that showed how disengaged from reality they are. At least Russert balanced Arab apologist Jim Zogby with Krauthammer, who made the key point, “we were the ones attacked–they should be asking themselves ‘why do they hate us?'”

This Week double teamed the issue (no balance at all), with a reporter from Al Jazeera and some guy from the Brookings Institution, who helpfully pointed out that not only does the Arab world hate us, but the rest of the world does, too.

I have just one comment. I’ll consider a Gallup poll of the Arab populace to be of greater than zero value when they perform one in an Arab country with a free press.

It seems that some people have nothing better to do than write weblog reviews, describing how boring my travelogues are.

Hint: John and Carl–there’s this thing called a “scroll bar.” It’s just over there on the right side of your browser.

The people who bothered to leave comments seemed to like them.

Well, well.

Right after bemoaning the difficulty of renting a car with a stick shift, I find this article in the WSJ about how they’re becoming more popular again. (Link only available for subscribers)

It also has a lot of horror stories about what happens to people who don’t know how to drive them:

A woman learning to drive a stick in the parking lot of the Alexandria, Va., church last August popped the clutch, jumped a curb — and slid 85 feet into a brick pillar. The car was totaled and the church sustained $15,000 in damage — and had to cancel its Sunday services. (The woman, whom Fairfax County Police say was not cited, could not be reached for comment.)

“We have signs up now that say ‘No Practice Driving,'” says church administrator Betty Ware. “But we were thinking of adding another that says ‘Especially If You’re Learning on a Standard.'”

Charles Johnson reports that the beverages of choice for some Islamic extremists are camel’s milk, and camel’s… urine.

Well, if you can’t tell mammary output from bladder output, maybe it’s not surprising that you can’t distinguish a skyscraper from a runway. Or your ass from a hole in the ground.

NBC News has learned that for the first time, U.S. Air Force F-15?s used thermobaric weapons Saturday against caves south of Gardez. Two of the extremely accurate, 2,000-pound thermobaric bombs were dropped into caves in eastern Afghanistan where al- Qaida and Taliban fighters were believed to be hiding, U.S. defense officials said.

The thermobaric warhead is designed to penetrate deeply into caves or tunnels, creating many times the normal pressure to propel the explosives further inside the cave and kill more people. The weapons contain ?fuel-rich? warheads that can fill tunnels with fireballs.

Hope they’ve restocked the virgin supply.

Not that website polls have any scientific validity, but I thought that this one at US News, on Bill Clinton’s future employment prospects, was quite amusing.

And for those interested in my PQ (Philosophy Quotient) here are my results from this test.

1. Mill (100%)
2. Rand (91%)
3. Kant (79%)
4. Aristotle (76%)
5. Aquinas (72%)
6. Stoics (72%)
7. Epicureans (66%)
8. Bentham (64%)
9. Sartre (57%)
10. Hume (52%)
11. Prescriptivism (52%)
12. Plato (51%)
13. Spinoza (47%)
14. Nietzsche (42%)
15. Augustine (39%)
16. Hobbes (39%)
17. Cynics (26%)
18. Ockham (20%)
19. Noddings (13%)

I haven’t had the time to figure out what this means.

Just to match myself up against my weglogging compatriots, I took the religion test that everyone else has been taking. Here’s how I came out:

1. Nontheist (100%)
2. Secular Humanism (100%)
3. Unitarian Universalism (92%)
4. Theravada Buddhism (75%)
5. Liberal Quakers (69%)
6. Neo-Pagan (65%)
7. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (58%)
8. Taoism (42%)
9. New Thought (42%)
10. Scientology (42%)
11. New Age (41%)
12. Bah