Medary.com

Oh, this is so wrong, in so many ways. And yet, so funny, in a sick and heartless sort of way. 

("Let's go Clubbing" gratuituously stolen from one of the first comments in the linked article. Heh, heh, heh. Where's muh club?)

Via Instapundit.

Yes, I know Senator Debbie was trying to call President Bush incompetent, but really . . . the dress color matches the sign, does it not?

Bristol, UK wants to put up a statue to the animated inventor and his ever-suffering canine sidekick:

Matthew Symonds, a local councilor in Bristol where Nick Park and Aardman Animations created the now-famous pair, said it was time to recognize the contribution that Wallace and Gromit have made to the city in southwest England.

"Everyone loves Wallace and Gromit and everyone I've spoken to on this matter agrees that we should thank Aardman in some way for what they have done for the city," said Symonds.

Reports say the Shuttle won't launch as planned in May, but now won't launch until July. Bad sensors are blamed.

The fleet is to be retired in what, 2010? Tick, tick, tick, that's four years from now, y'all.

Assuming that the ultra-secret Blackstar actually exists and was retired, maybe it's time to lift the security classifications, roll the bad boy out, and start flying to space more sensibly than putting human beings on top of giant overgrown fireworks rockets. Maybe.

You may have heard about Vivi, the championship whippet that escaped from her crate at New York's JFK airport about a month ago.

Apparently, there's been a sighting (well, technically, I guess it would be a "sniffing") as Newsday reports:

Almost a month after a champion whippet named Vivi escaped from her crate at Kennedy Airport after competing in the Westminster Kennel Club show, a pet detective said she believes the elusive California show dog has been trotting around the borough.

"She's really doing New York," said Karin Goin, of Depew, Okla., who searched the airport area Friday and yesterday. "This is the toughest breed to catch, and she's traveling."

Goin used her two tracking dogs - Cade, a chocolate Lab-coonhound mix, and Boone, whose pedigree is murkier - to search the airport area.

The two canine sleuths picked up a trail in South Jamaica that led them to 110-acre Baisley Pond Park, just north of the airport.

But later in the day, after a phone tip from someone who said she had seen the white and brindle dog trotting down her street, Goin took the dogs to a residential area near 192nd Street and 45th Avenue in Flushing, where she said she could tell by her dogs' body language, including the position of their head and the pace, that the trail was likely only a day old.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that Northwest Airlines is introducing aisle seats for a fee:

Northwest will now reserve a few aisle and exit-row seats for people who are willing to pay $15 extra when they check in.

On a Boeing 757, only 10 seats will be for sale for the extra $15 fee. Six of those seats are in exit rows and four are aisle seats near the front of the 160-seat coach cabin.

On domestic flights, Cron stressed, there will be no extra fee attached to about 95 percent of the seats in coach. But the airline wants to take the next 30 to 60 days to get a handle on consumers' willingness to pay extra to get a better seat, and the carrier may expand the number of seats offered with the new fee.

Via Fark.

If you saw the NCAA Basketball Tournament Selection Show last Sunday on CBS, you saw NCAA Selection Chairman Craig Littlepage suffering a classic 60-Minutes-Style drive-by media lynching from CBS' Billy Packer and Jim Nantz. Packer and Nantz were outraged that the "mid-major" Missouri Valley Conference placed four teams in the tournament, the same number as the media darlings in the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big East, Big 10, and other "major" conferences.

Now, it's Littlepage's turn:

But what riled Littlepage was Packer's assertion the committee look at a five-year track record of teams and conferences. Littlepage and past committee chairmen have stated regularly that past performances have no bearing on the brackets.

And Littlepage said the reason teams from the traditional power conferences fare better in the tournament is that they typically get higher seeds.

"He may have an opinion about that or the two of them may have an opinion about that, and they are certainly free to have those opinions and express those opinions," Littlepage said of Packer and his CBS broadcast partner, Jim Nantz. "But to look at this in terms of the partnership, you would hope there would be a little better understanding of what it is that we do and an accurate reflection of the facts as they know them to be. Facts, instead of opinions, would be helpful."

Via YOCO.

Woman Shows Off Five-Pound Monster Mango, from Yahoo News:

When Colleen Porter took her mango to the local grocer, it wasn't to sell it, but to weigh it and show it off. Colleen Porter, already a state mango record holder, has been confirmed by the Guinness Book of World Records as growing the world's heaviest mango — 5 pounds, 7 ounces. The monster mango appears to be close to the size of a human head.

Not surprisingly, jingoistic demagoguery wins, in the real world. Unfortunately, that probably means we all lose in the long run.

Christopher Chantrill at The American Thinker:

Back in 1984 Robert Axelrod from the University of Michigan announced a competition to devise an iterative strategy for winning the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Against all expectations the winner was a strategy called TIT FOR TAT. This strategy operated according to a simple rule. It started out by cooperating with the other prisoner, but thereafter always copied the other’s move. If he cooperated, TIT FOR TAT cooperated back. If the other prisoner defected, then TIT FOR TAT would defect right back. If you conduct this iterated strategy on the world, you will find that it creates islands of trust and cooperation that slowly grow and eventually take over the world.

You can beat TIT FOR TAT. In 2004 a team of students at Southampton University did it using a strategy of collusion between the prisoners, illuminating why we have laws against price fixing and insider trading.

TIT FOR TAT teaches that you should trust people who have demonstrated their trustworthiness.

But no, we'd rather trust hysterical Senators and Congressmen. When will we ever learn?

Myths of Iraq by Ralph Peters:

During a recent visit to Baghdad, I saw an enormous failure. On the part of our media. The reality in the streets, day after day, bore little resemblance to the sensational claims of civil war and disaster in the headlines.

No one with first-hand experience of Iraq would claim the country's in rosy condition, but the situation on the ground is considerably more promising than the American public has been led to believe. Lurid exaggerations and instant myths obscure real, if difficult, progress.

I left Baghdad more optimistic than I was before this visit. While cynicism, political bias and the pressure of a 24/7 news cycle accelerate a race to the bottom in reporting, there are good reasons to be soberly hopeful about Iraq's future.

Perhaps if Old Media reporters would stop hiding in their Baghdad hotels (or worse, opining from the comfort of their Atlanta or New York offices) and start listening to those who have actually done real reporting from Iraq, like Michael Yon, Ralph Peters, Michael Totten, and many others, they just might perform a useful public service rather than simply participating in the echo chamber of despair.

Hat tip: Instapundit.