Jen’s 7-year-old cousin Caitlin smiles in a picture that she took of herself, using my digital camera, on Jan. 9. Here’s a less blurry picture that I took of Caitlin cuddling with her Pooh bear.

InstaPundit says Hamas’s message to Iraq about suicide bombing is not a new idea; Iraq “has already made preparations for this sort of thing, without striking much fear into Americans’ hearts.” Well, I’m a little scared.

I’m even more scared about this: possible suicide bombings on American soil. I’m slightly less scared about this: possible attacks in Zanzibar. Then again, I don’t live in Zanzibar.

Scariest of all, though, might be the INS’s ongoing effort to register all foreign nationals from countries that are deemed potentially dangerous. I believe the administration is doing this with the best of intentions, but imagine what uses such a list might be put to in a nightmare scenario.

Let’s say terrorists release anthrax in Chicago, set off a dirty bomb in New York, and bomb the White House, killing thousands –”another 9/11.” Or, worse, let’s imagine that they manage to smuggle a suitcase bomb — a “small” nuke — into the country, and they set it off in Washington. Hundreds of thousands die, the government is paralyzed, and America goes into a true state of seige. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to imagine that a virtual police state would emerge, at least in the short-term. And, lo and behold, we have this nice little list of Muslim immigrants. Do you feel you can confidently assert that it wouldn’t be used to stage a repeat of the 1940s Japanese internment camps? Because I sure don’t.

I hated it when anti-war liberals and overzealous ACLU types used the “Japanese internment camp” line in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, when it was quite clear we were not moving in that direction. But I fear we could be one major attack away from going to a far, far worse place than we can presently imagine. (Have you ever seen “The Seige”?) And since another major attack is very possible, I think it’s prudent to wonder about the possible unintended consequences of creating what could become a convenient list of undesirables.

None of which would necessarily mean that the list is a bad idea, if its benefits actually outweighed its potential for misuse. But I’m not sure its benefits are terribly great. Think about it: are terrorists really going to walk down the local INS office and register? Of course not. They’re going to stay at home, stay in secret, and keep plotting. And unless the INS has suddenly become a lot more competent that its current reputation would suggest, the terrorists probably are not going to get caught. More likely than not, this registration thing is just going to result in more deportations for minor immigration violations (such as the new crime of failing to register) and very little actual progress in the war on terrorism.

On a considerably lighter note, eBay has removed a family’s offer to sell itself to the highest bidder. Like the song says, only in America.

Saturday weekly traffic record with 584 hits — as of 4:12 PM Pacific time Friday — breaking the old mark of 561 unique hits from Dec. 15 through Dec. 21. The record-breaking 562nd hit came from a Mac user at 11:55 AM Pacific time who searched on HotBot for Wesley Clark, a possible Democratic presidential candidate.

JABALIYA REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip (AP) - The militant group Hamas, which has carried out scores of suicide bombings in Israel, urged Iraq on Friday to copy its tactics and send thousands of attackers with explosives strapped to their bodies into a battle against the West. “We call on the Arabs and Muslims to burn the land under the feet of the American invaders, especially our brothers in Saudi Arabia because this war is not against Iraq, it’s against the Islamic nation,” Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi told a rally in this impoverished shanty encampment.

Oh, joy.

I frankly haven’t been paying attention, but I just discovered that all this week, my website has been getting heavier traffic than ever before!

From Sunday through Wednesday of this week, My world has received more than 100 hits every single day! And it may reach triple-digits today as well — as of 8:50 PM Pacific time, the total is 84 and counting. To put that in perspective, there had only been two days prior to this week when My world had ever received over 100 hits: Dec. 5 (108 hits) and Dec. 17 (135).

The daily record, 135, remains intact for now. But the weekly Sunday-through-Saturday record is about to fall, and it’s not even Friday yet. The site received 561 hits from Dec. 15 through Dec. 21; this week, it’s received 518 and counting. The totals: 106 on Sunday, 110 on Monday, 109 on Tuesday, and 109 again on Wednesday.

One new record has already been set this week. On Monday, the site received 1,379 “page impressions,” a total that counts visits to individual pages instead of visits to the site as a whole. (The “unique hits” total counts each visitor as one “hit” regardless of how many pages he or she views.) The previous page-impression record was 1,065, set on Dec. 5.

The sudden uptick in traffic follows a distinct holiday lull between Dec. 21 and Jan. 1, during which there was only one day with more than 60 unique hits, and the average daily total was just 44. I have yet to discover any single, easily identifiable reason for the surge.

NOTE: The official count from estats4all.com indicates that My world received 123 hits on Sunday, 118 on Monday, 115 on Tuesday, and 117 on Wednesday. In reality, the numbers are a bit lower, as stated above. This discrepancy is due to an America Online quirk that sometimes causes the estats4all counter to record multiple unique hits in a single visit from an AOL user. The same discrepancy caused the record-setting Dec. 17 total to be adjusted downward from its original reported total, 139, to 135.

Men’s college basketball: USC 85, UCLA 80!

USC’s football team finished the season ranked #1 in two computer ratings. Hurrah!

The Sagarin ratings have the Trojans ranked #1, with Miami #2, Ohio State #3, and Oklahoma #4. Sagarin produces one of the seven computer ratings used in the Bowl Championship Series standings — but the BCS actually uses a modified version of Sagarin, called “ELO-BCS,” which has the Trojans ranked #4.

USC is also ranked #1 in the final Matthews/Scripps Howard ratings. Matthews/Scripps Howard is not used in the BCS at all.

Why does USC fare better in the non-BCS computer ratings? Because the BCS does not allow margin of victory to be factored into the equation, but other computer ratings do consider it. Because most of the Trojans’ wins were blowouts, and both of our losses were very close games, ratings that include margin of victory favor us.

So where did the Trojans finish in the other BCS computer ratings?
New York Times: #2
Kenneth Massey: #2 (but #4 in the BCS version)
Anderson & Hester: #4
Colley Matrix: #4
Peter Wolfe: #4
Richard Billingsley: #5

As reported earlier, we finished #4 in both the AP and coaches’ polls, just barely behind #3 Georgia.

My world received its 10,000th hit Wednesday at 2:28 PM Eastern time when a Mac user searched on Google Canada for cute kitten pictures and found an image of Toby.

Just barely missing a chance to be the site’s 10,000th visitor was Rich from Connecticut, who produced hit number 10,001 at 2:36 PM Eastern time — just eight minutes after the milestone hit — and left a comment on my recent blog post about possible Democratic presidential candidates.

My world’s hit count dates back to Feb. 23, 2002.

At the time of the historic hit, I was at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford, watching the re-inauguration of Governor John Rowland, who was elected in November to a third term. The inauguration occurred roughly two hours after an anti-Rowland rally at the State Capitol drew approximately 2,000 people protesting the governor’s recent state-employee layoffs. I’ll post pictures of the rally and the inauguration shortly.

UPDATE, 4:12 PM Eastern time: Here is the text of Rowland’s rather fluffy and meaningless inaugural speech.

I’m at my dad’s office right now, and I’ll be heading over to the State Capitol shortly to take part in a rally protesting Governor Rowland’s recent unjustified layoffs of 3,000 state workers.

My mom laughs as my dad wears Groucho Marx glasses that my Aunt Patty and Uncle John gave him for Christmas. Here’s another picture of my dad being silly with the glasses on Jan. 7.

A model of one of the proposed architectural designs for the World Trade Center site, called the “World Cultural Center,” is displayed in Lower Manhattan. I checked out the designs in person on Jan. 6, and my favorites are this one and the “kissing” twin towers.

The Empire State Building is barely visible from 20 blocks away on a snowy and foggy afternoon in New York on Jan. 6. I took this picture after touring Cardozo law school; I also visited Columbia and NYU.

This piece of paper, advertising for a “progressive rock band,” originally said “BASS NEEDED.” Then somebody covered up the “B,” producing a message that’s, um, base. And damn funny. :)

The Democratic Party has now dodged two bullets: potential presidential candidacies by Al Gore and Tom Daschle, both candidates with lots of prominence and name recognition, but very little charisma, vision, or electability. Daschle added his name today to the “I’m not running” list. Hooray!

Now, hopefully the party can pick someone good. (Hint: Not a senator. Senators may look good to party insiders and primary voters, but they’re almost never elected president. Governors, vice presidents, and generals become presidents. Senators don’t. It’s all about Howard Dean or Wesley Clark.)

In other news, I got dismissed from jury duty today — after sitting around for four hours — because, well, I’m flying back to California on Jan. 11 and starting classes at USC on Jan. 13, so it would be a little hard for me to sit on a jury in a Connecticut criminal trial that’s due to begin Jan. 15. Yes, it took them four hours to figure this out. Gotta love our legal system. :)

Think Miami fans are upset about the controversial pass-interference call that reversed an apparent Hurricanes national championship Friday night? This website received a hit today from someone doing the following Google search: Ohio State illegitimate championship.

The person was probably disappointed in what he/she found: a Nov. 26 blog post that mentioned then-#2 Ohio State and also mentioned Nebraska’s status in last year’s title game as “an ‘illegitimate’ national-championship contender.” Alas, Google, like a referee, does not always give you what you want.