Spent the most futile 2 hours of my life today on the phone to tech support for my modem...

Sorry, almost forgot... The Tom Ridge color of the day is periwinkle blue: The cermony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Tech support being in Colorado, so at $.05/minute, that call cost more than the modem, and got me exactly nowhere. At the end it was suggested that I reload Windows95, which is not going to happen.

Hypocrisy watch: I’m waiting for someone in the Bush admin to forget about bombing Afghanistan over Ramadan and complain about this latest attack coming on Passover (actually before Passover). Bush already made some comment about people who would rather kill than have peace. As opposed to Bush himself, he wants (temporary) peace in Israel so he can kill in Iraq.

Note that when Lebanon for some reason blocked Arafat addressing the Arab conference by video link, he was able to bypass them by going on Al Jazeera. A semi-free press, ain’t it great?

Dudley Moore died today (as did Milton Berle, as ever stealing someone else’s act), and I’d just like to point out that he did actually do some pretty funny work, little of which you’ve ever seen or heard, so it’s sadder than you think.

Tracy Emin is a British artist and Turner prize winner who has sometimes featured in my “But is it art?” e-mails, including for her most famous work, an unmade bed. Anyway, her cat went missing and she put up posters, which were immediately taken down again by neighbors who thought they must be worth something. The cat came back anyway.

A first in Spain (or anywhere else, to my knowledge): a priest installed a mobile-phone jamming device in his church to prevent phones ringing during services. Especially annoying are the ones that play tunes. The most popular tune in Spain is the Mission Impossible theme. You can make your own joke about this one: parting the Red Sea, virgin birth...

Indian scientists have worked out a way to make vegetables less
gas-producing: bombarding them with gamma rays. And you’d better fart less, because after the first irradiated aspharagus, you grow three extra butts.

The Supreme Court, by an astonishing 8-0 vote (I didn’t know Breyer had a brother on the circuit court in SF, did you?) allows public housing to throw out people who are visited by people who are caught with drugs somewhere else entirely without the knowledge of the tenants. Rehnquist says that’s reasonable.

Californian prison authorities are planning on new rules to allow strip searching and background checks on visitors over the age of 7, a ban on sitting on laps, requiring women visitors to wear bras and not to kiss their husbands or whomever for more than 5 seconds, etc etc.