She yells: "JESUS! Can you stop being an asshole for FIVE MINUTES?"

I check my watch.

15 Minutes?

By my math, if only one person can be famous at a time, everyone should be famous for more like 39 seconds. That's probably a bad assumption, however, since the Earth can clearly support more than one famous person at a time. It goes to 13:20 if you assume 20 people at a time. That averages to 1 famous person at a time in the US, but I'd say the US can support 10 famous people at a time at least. This means that each of us can now be famous for over 2 hours! I propose we keep 10 people on TV at all times, swapping out the one who's been there the longest every 13:20.

My Daughters Saw STAR WARS for the Frist Time Last Night

Last night, I decided that, since they're 5 now, they are old enough to see Star Wars (Ep IV, ANH), since that's how old I was when I had seen it for the first time. I'd thought a lot about it. My original plan was to show them TPM first, since that's pretty-much a kids movie anyway and it's about a little boy. I thought I might show them all of the movies in sequential (rather than chronological) order. However, ROTS blew that plan by being the least kid-friendly (darkest, scarriest and grossest) of them all. Also I figured that they might actually be more likely to end up liking Star Wars if I showed them a good one first.

Well, they were in rapt attention throughout. This was gratifying bordering on thrilling for me. However, when it was over, I asked them what they thought. Celia said:

"It was really more of a boys' move since there was only one girl and she didn't do very much."

I'm proud of her for demanding strong female characters. I told her that Princess Leia was the toughest of them all. Celia said "Maybe, but they didn't show her tough."

Eva said "I liked the ending more than the rest."

"You mean when they blew up the Death Star? I love that part too." I said.

"No"

"When they got their awards?"

"No"

"Then which part?"

"When they married"

That's right. She thought the award ceremony (white dress, walking the aisle, music) was Princess Leia marrying one or both of Han and Luke.

Straight-Up Propaganda Torture

After reading this article in the NYT I realized that Cheney had already won the PR war on torture. He's got people debating about whether the information we got was worth the means. Maybe yes, maybe no. Who cares? The important thing to realize is that this torture was never meant to get any information in the first place. According to the article, they were using techniques known by our military not to be effective in getting information. These techniques are known to be effective in getting propaganda confessions. They used these techniques on people who had been off of the battlefield for months -- sometimes years -- and could not possibly have any actionable intelligence.

What was Cheney trying to get them to say? Well, they were very interested at that time in convincing us that Saddam had something to do with 9/11. They may have believed that a "confession" would have helped them in this cause. Why did they fail? Maybe the Army/CIA/etc. aren't as full of toadies as Cheney thought.

51-Star American Flag

Here is my proposal for a 51-star flag. I think, at this point, the rectangle has been done. It's time for a new shape.