Eenie Meenie, Cheery Beanie!
"Robert X. Cringely" has his computer industry predictions for 2003. While all are interesting, #15 speaks to blogdom:

15. And finally, with the continued (and to me totally inexplicable) rise of web logs, someone -- maybe Google -- will come up with an effective blog search engine to read all that junk for us and extract what we really care about.

Based on my referrer log, it looks like Google does that now. At least as well as any web search engine ever works.

The Guardian also has a list, many entries of which are pretty mundane, but some are interesting:

Mobile photos
After a slow start (today they are too expensive and don't easily work between operators) camera phones will boom in 2003. Prices will drop as operators try to encourage us to send photos to friends. Equally addictive is taking photos of people, places and events to create your own visual diary. Don't leave home without one.

And send those snaps to The Smoking Gun! Well, maybe not the ones you are in.

Say Cheese!
The Smoking Gun has a collection of the best non-celebrity mugshots of 2002. My favorite is Bambi - attention K-mart shoppers!

It's Blogger Again
Or maybe it's Blogspot. Whatever. But all posts have been whacked since Thursday. They appear in my archives, but not in the main blog page.

UPDATE: Appears to be fixed now.

He's Picking, I'm Grinning
Tim Blair does a stint in the Augean stables in Balancing the blooper count. A small sample:

SMH television reviewer Bruce Elder demands perspective: "Just remember that while terrorists killed more than 3000 people in the events of 9/11, that 150,000 die each year (that's nearly 3000 a week) because of drunk driving throughout the United States. Perspective. That is what is needed most." What Bruce needs most is a calculator. According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, 17,448 people died in alcohol-related road accidents in the US last year - around 2665 fewer per week than Elder alleges.

Ignorant Americans who "don't read quality newspapers or watch public broadcasting or travel overseas unprotected by tourist buses" present a "great danger for the world", according to The Age's Janet McCalman. If only they were more worldly and educated, like Osama bin Laden.

Well golly gee, not reading wingnut McCalman in the Age and missing those fine public broadcasting whinefests has me plumb upset, that's fer sure! But no tourist buses for me, Jan. I prefer an SUV. Although some of my acquaintances like a more robust model when visiting foreign lands.

Empty Suit Alert!
Edwards enters race for presidency:

Sen. John Edwards, a multimillionaire trial lawyer from the South and relative newcomer to Washington, announced today that he will seek the Democratic presidential nomination, saying he wants to be "a champion for regular people."

Zzzzzz. I hope he doesn't get distracted by any ambulance sirens.

But he is better looking than Hillary.

UPDATE: Rodger Schultz has a campaign poster already!

Emergency PR Resuscitation Needed!
WCBS in NYC reports H&R Block employee accused in ID scam:

(White Plains, New York-AP) -- More than two dozen customers who went to H-and-R Block for tax-preparation help had their personal information stolen as part of an identity theft scam, according to a federal complaint.

The complaint says four suspects allegedly used the information to divert the victims' mail - including tax refunds - and to set up credit card accounts for their own ``shopping sprees.''
...
A spokesman for the US Postal Inspection Service says H-and-R Block did not willingly cooperate with the investigation.

Smooth move, Ex-Lax.

The Bad News Biz and a New Kind of Vulture
Craig Offman of Variety reports Bad Tidings for Cable News Pack:

NEW YORK (Variety) - For cable news networks, a war with Iraq may not be such a bad thing.

CNN, Headline News, MSNBC and CNBC suffered double-digit drops in year-end ratings vs. 2001, the year that audiences flocked to the television for updates on post-9/11 events.

Only Fox News, which has become the prime peacetime cable news destination, experienced significant growth in total-day and primetime versus 2001.
...
Most networks, however, saw significant growth in those specific timeslots during the October sniper attacks, when audiences likely tuned in when they got home from work or later when they turned in for the night.

The coverage of the murders in northern Virginia gave Fox News, CNN and MSNBC a boost in fourth-quarter total-audience ratings vs. the previous quarter.

Why do vultures come to mind?

Actually, I shouldn't be surprised - they were selling newspapers a century ago on the same basis. But there's a new twist these days as cyberCongressman Billybob reports in a special to Free Republic:

On Thursday mornings, I do a half-hour segment on the national radio show, "American Breakfast." I expected Ellen Ratner to come on for the last five minutes of that segment, as she has the last two weeks.

She knows me, and I know her. My feeling is that she was afraid to come on this morning and face the music about her "dead Americans" comment.

To recap for those who just tuned in, last Friday on Neal Cavuto's Show on Fox, the following exchange took place between Ratner and Brenda Buttner, sitting in for Cavuto:

[After a discussion that George Bush would be reelected "unless the economy tanks," Ratner said:

Ratner: Unless he messes up the war -- I hope.

Buttner: You hope?!

Ratner: Well, I don't want him to be reelected.

Billybob rightly asks how many Americans Ellen would like to die so that President Bush can be viewed as "messing up the war". And a poster observes

Actually, most of the Democrats on the Hill hope for the same thing. They're just not stupid enough to say it aloud on TV.

Has anyone contacted Patty Murray?

Party Animal Alert!
The AP reports that Five killed at Afghan wedding party after revellers fire rocket-propelled grenade:

KABUL (AP) - Five people were killed and six wounded when guests at an Afghan wedding party fired a rocket propelled grenade into the air, only to have it land nearby, an official said Wednesday.

"One of the grenades landed back on the ground near the wedding party, but it hadn't gone off," said Abdul Matin Hasankhiel, a senior military commander in the area.

"A commander attending the wedding went to see why it didn't explode. When he touched it, it went off."
...
Hasankhiel said revellers fired assault rifles and seven rocket-propelled grenades to celebrate the wedding. Guns are often fired into the air to celebrate marriages in Afghanistan, but that tradition does not often include firing heavier munitions, such as grenades or rockets.

Good thing they don't have artillery.

Ruh oh!
The Times of India startles with Deport Cherie Blair, Britons urge in poll:

LONDON: The wife of Prime Minister Tony Blair is the person Britons most want kicked out of the country after her links to a convicted conman were exposed in the recent Cheriegate affair, according to a poll on Wednesday.

In a tongue-in-cheek BBC survey drawing 15,000 votes, Cherie Blair topped the hall of shame with 31 per cent after damaging revelations last month about her property dealings with a convicted fraudster dominated headlines and embarrassed the government.
...
On the deportation vote, Cherie Blair narrowly beat the London-based radical Muslim cleric Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Masri -- accused by the US government of being linked to Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

She even beat Captain Hook!

And on the other side

In a parallel vote on who they wanted to see named honorary Britons, 51 per cent went for Myanmar's pro-democracy opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was released from 19 months of house arrest in May.

Former US President Bill Clinton came second with 18 per cent. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein -- whom Britain is considering going to war against -- came fifth on the list of favourites for British citizenship with 7 per cent of the vote.

"He will cause far less problems where we can keep an eye on him," one voter for Saddam explained.

Hillary said the same about Bubba.

You have to be kidding!
Zev Chafets on Dem Dummies:

The Democrats are putting out the word: They intend to defuse charges that they're soft on national security by being tougher than President Bush on domestic terrorism.

Who comes up with this stuff?

The Democrats may be correct when they argue that the United States isn't significantly safer from terrorist attack than it was before Sept. 11. But the party has precisely no chance of making homeland hawkishness its issue, because its far-left wing adamantly opposes the single most necessary component of any internal security policy: identifying the enemy.

Far-left Democrats sometimes put their objection in practical terms - they argue that profiling young Arab and Iranian men isn't an efficient way to look for terrorists. In fact, there is no other way. Fighting domestic terror means finding the bad guys and their enablers. They will not be found at the local Elks Lodge. The usual suspects are usual for a reason.
...
When a Democratic senator like Patty Murray of Washington says Osama Bin Laden is popular in the Arab world because he builds day care facilities, and nobody in the Democratic leadership begs to differ, that's pretty much the end of any liberal claim to muscular credibility on Al Qaeda.

Is this why Hillary is talking up improved border security with Canada?