The Mount St. Helens webcam is back up.

Yes, the mountain is still there. :) But the earthquakes continue.

UPDATE: They’re having one or two quakes every minute, the AP reports.

A hat tip to Kristine for bringing this article to my attention:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Local governments cannot bar nude dancing clubs from staging simulated sex acts, a U.S. federal court ruled on Monday.

In a legal fight dating back to 1997, Dream Palace in Tempe, Arizona, sued over local regulations in Maricopa County that, among other things, barred dancers from performing “simulated sex acts.” …

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, sided with the adult club that such restrictions were unconstitutional.

“The county appears to have proscribed the particular movements and gestures that a dancer may make during the course of the performance,” Judge Diarmiud O’Scannlain wrote.

“If Elvis’ gyrating hips can fairly be understood to constitute a ’simulated sex act,’ one can fully appreciate the potential scope of the restrictions placed on erotic dancers in Maricopa County.”

Hooray for the Ninth Circuit! :) And hooray for the Phoenix Valley! Hehe.

I want to hear Prof. Gunn talking about this case in class…

I’m at a panel on “Media Trust and Bias in 50/50 America” at Notre Dame’s McKenna Hall. There’s a wireless hotspot in the room, and I’ve got my PowerBook, so I’ll blog my thoughts below.

As usual with such things, at least half the people here seem to be faculty and other university bigwigs — that is, non-students. And of the students who are here, I think some are required to be here for a class. But hopefully some are here of their own volition. :) I know I am. It was either this, or reading CrimLaw…

Moderator (who hasn’t introduced himself): Experts are noting “the growing significance of information sources with readily identifiable idelogical viewpoints, and wondering whether we’re experiencing a return to the days of the partisan press, and whether these sources are contributing to the political polarization we hear so much about today.”

“Journalistic malpractice” leading to “skepticism about mainstream media” and how they operate.

53% of Americans agree with the statement “I often don’t trust what news organizations are saying” (Pew poll). 44% expressed confidence in media’s ability to report news stories accurately and fairly, a decline of 10% from a year ago and the lowest since poll started in 1972 (Gallup).

Don Wycliff, public editor of the Chicago Tribune: Last Tuesday, Tribune had A1 story on Kerry’s Iraq speech, headline was “Kerry: Bush failed in Iraq.” In this “hyperthyroidal year,” this “attracted a lot of mail.” Reading from “typical” letter: By promoting Kerry and bashing Bush, Tribune acted as a proxy for the terrorists. Wycliff says: “In this election year, it seems that if you write about one candidate, you are automatically ‘bashing’ his opponent and vice versa. Many letters suggest ‘treason’ — that word is very easily tossed about these days. … The newspaper, the news medium, in considered to be part of some sort on conspiracy by reporting the news on these things.”

Wycliff says that New York Times editor’s note on poor pre-war WMD coverage isn’t noted as frequently by some commentators as other ethical failures, but that “breach of trust…had far great effects” than Blair and Bragg failures. “Arguably, it contributed to our getting into the war.”

“The watch-word of the year is ‘transparency.’” Hmm… don’t blogs have this in spades? I think InstaPundit is a lot more “transparent” than the New York Times.

#1 source of complaints is people who believe “we don’t check our biases at the door.”

Wycliff says “diversity” has been conceived of too narrowly: “We have not focused on intellectual diversity. Here I’m pleading guilty to the claims of some of our critics. In most of the newspaper newsrooms I’ve been in, it’s tough to find an outspoken conservative except in the editorial pages. It’s tough to find somebody who will speak up and admit that he or she is pro-life. That’s a point of view that people express, they feel, at their peril. And finally, it’s tough to find people who are religious, who will offer that point of view in a newsroom. And believe me, that can be crippling to a news organization.”

NOTE: Typos now corrected!

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NBC is doing what it should have done when Johnny Carson left: giving the Tonight Show to the host of Late Night. Conan O’Brien will take over for Jay Leno in 2009. Woohoo!

Watch closely as the anti-Kerry spin machine eats this article up and chews it out:

French and German government officials say they will not significantly increase military assistance in Iraq even if John Kerry, the Democratic presidential challenger, is elected on November 2. …

“I cannot imagine that there will be any change in our decision not to send troops, whoever becomes president,” Gert Weisskirchen, member of parliament and foreign policy expert for Germany’s ruling Social Democratic Party, said in an interview.

Fair enough, but note Mr. Weisskirchen’s follow-up sentence: “That said, Mr Kerry seems genuinely committed to multilateralism and as president he would find it easier than Mr Bush to secure the German government’s backing in other matters.”

Somehow, though, I don’t think Kerry’s detractors will be focusing on the latter quote. Drudge’s headline: “French, German Officials Say They Won’t Send Troops To Iraq Even if Kerry Wins.” Andrew’s commentary: “Kerry needs to stop blowing smoke out of his hole on this issue and face reality.” Yet it seems to me, the two quotes from Mr. Weisskirchen are of roughly equal significance — and that significance may well be none, but in any event I don’t see how Quote #1 is significant and Quote #2 is not.

P.S. In his reply to my mention of the second quote, Andrew proceeded to bash the Social Democratic Party. Which is great, but it fails to address why Quote #1 from the SDP matters and Quote #2 doesn’t.

There have been a whole bunch of earthquakes near Mount St. Helens in the last hour or two. Full list here.

As Instapundit puts it, “Just in case you didn’t have enough to worry about”… check out this U.S. Geological Survey Press Release:

Seismic activity at Mount St. Helens has changed significantly during the past 24 hours and the changes make us believe that there is an increased likelihood of a hazardous event, which warrants release of this Notice of Volcanic Unrest. The swarm of very small, shallow earthquakes (less than Magnitude 1) that began on the morning of 23 September peaked about mid-day on 24 September and slowly declined through yesterday morning. However, since then the character of the swarm has changed to include more than ten larger earthquakes (Magnitude 2-2.8), the most in a 24-hr period since the eruption of October 1986. In addition, some of the earthquakes are of a type that suggests the involvement of pressurized fluids (water and steam) or perhaps magma. The events are still occurring at shallow depths (less than one mile) below the lava dome that formed in the crater between 1980 and 1986. The cause and outcome of the earthquake swarm are uncertain at this time. Several causes are possible, but most point toward an increased probability of explosions from the lava dome if the level of current unrest continues or escalates. During such explosions the dome and crater floor are at greatest risk from ballistic projectiles, but the rim of the crater and flanks of the volcano could also be at risk. Explosions would also be expected to produce ash clouds that drift downwind at altitudes up to several thousand feet above the crater rim. Landslides and debris flows from the crater that are large enough to reach the Pumice Plain are also possible. Such events occurred at Mount St. Helens between 1989 and 1991.

Updates will be posted as needed here and here.

Here’s a webcam view of Mount St. Helens (currently offline, but due to return tomorrow).

Here’s a USGS map of recent earthquakes in the area. You can see the earthquake “cluster.”

Here’s info on the big eruption in 1980, whose aftershocks (in the form of continuing “minor eruptions”) continued until 1986, the date cited above. Here’s more 1980 info.

Here’s a page with lots and lots of relevant links.

P.S. I blame global warming. Somebody get Al Gore on the phone! This is all Bush’s fault!! :)

P.P.S. If Mount St. Helens erupts, all bets are off in terms of my light blogging week.

UPDATE: Here’s the AP article. Money quote: “The key issue is a small explosion without warning. That would be the major event that we’re worried about right now,” said Willie Scott, a geologist with the USGS office in Vancouver.

Although they have nothing yet, I assume that the Seattle Times and the Portland Oregonian would be good sources of info as (or perhaps I should say, if) this story develops.

USC is still ranked #1 in both the AP and Coaches polls, despite almost being stunned by Stanford yesterday (the Trojans’ first close-game victory since Oct. 12, 2002 against Cal, by the way). USC lost eight first-place votes in the AP poll and three in the Coaches poll, but they still have a sizable advantage over #2 Oklahoma in both.

Notre Dame, meanwhile, just barely failed to crack the Top 25. The Irish, #26 in the AP poll and #29 in the Coaches poll last week, are now #26 in both. Despite their impressive win over Washington, the Irish were doomed by the fact that no AP Top 25 team lost, or even came particularly close to losing (well, except #1 USC!), this weekend. Even so, Notre Dame nearly leapfrogged #25 Oklahoma State, which was idle this weekend, in the AP poll, reducing the Cowboys’ point margin from 45 to 14. [45 to 14? Why does that particular pair of numbers sound familiar? Oh yes… :) -ed.]

Oh, well. If the Irish beat undefeated #15 Purdue next weekend, surely they’ll crack the Top 25 in both polls. Perhaps Ty Willingham can use that as motivation. That, and in-state revenge.

P.S. Will ESPN College Gameday, which snubbed Notre Dame earlier this year (cancelling its planned trip to South Bend for the Michigan game at the last minute, because of the BYU loss — an rather unfortunate decision, as it turned out), come to our campus next weekend? I’m guessing probably not — #8 Auburn at #10 Tennessee is an objectively bigger game — but they’ve already been to two SEC campuses this year, so who knows? (Then again, they’ve already been to a Notre Dame game too, albeit an away game.)

Probably a more reasonable question is: Will Gameday travel to Los Angeles in two weeks for the USC-Cal game? It would seem an ideal opportunity to appease Pac-10 fans who cite Gameday’s well-documented aversion to trips out west as an especially egregious example of East Coast bias. And the Daily Trojan was already reporting way back in April that the game was on ESPN’s radar screen. But the clash between the #1 Trojans and the #10 Bears will have to compete against #3 Georgia vs. #10 Tennessee and #2 Oklahoma vs. #5 Texas for ESPN’s affections, and I’m betting the latter will win out unless either the Sooners or the Longhorns lose next weekend. Considering Texas is playing Baylor (Hi Chris :), I’m thinking USC’s best hope for a Gameday visit is to root for a Texas Tech stunner against the Sooners… and perhaps for a Georgia or Tennessee loss as well.

On a side note, I put way too much thought into this sort of thing. :)

Anaheim won, so Boston’s magic number to clinch the American League wild card remains at 2. The Red Sox lead the Angels by 6 games; each team has 7 games left to play.

Boston also leads the Texas Rangers by 7 games; the Sox’ magic number to eliminate the Rangers is 1.

To eliminate the Rangers, Boston needs simply to win one game, or for Texas to lose one game. To eliminate the Angels, Boston needs to win twice, or for Anaheim to lose twice, or for Boston to win once and Anaheim to lose once.

In other words, the race could be over tomorrow, or it could drag on for a little while, but it would take a monumental collapse for the Red Sox to not make the playofs. Then again, they are the Red Sox. :) I’ll feel safe when the magic number is zero. Stay tuned.

P.S. Texas and Anaheim are playing each other for the next four games, so somebody is going to be eliminated soon… :)

I’m not going to impose another moratorium (yet), but I’m going to sincerely try to cut back on my blogging this week, since I need to get a lot done on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, in light of the fact that Thursday night, Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning promise to be complete washouts in terms of getting work done (what with Becky coming to town, the presidential debate, and the ND-Purdue pep rally & pre-game partying & tailgating & game & post-game partying & post-party hangover/sleeping :).

So I’m going to limit myself to three or four posts per day. (Again, extremely brief “quote of the day” posts don’t count.) This is really what I should be doing anyway; I expected to cut back on weekday blogging a lot more than I have. So this week will be sort of a trial run for the rest of the semester.

Guestbloggers, of course, are welcomed and indeed encouraged to post as much as they want. :)

So begins Week Six!

Another impressive win for the once-hapless Newington High School football team — 42-27 over Conard — and the Indians are 2-0!

Woohoo!

Next Saturday, they travel to Enfield to take on Fermi.

The Red Sox took two of three from the Yankees at Fenway Park this weekend, and their magic number in the wild-card race is down to two. If Anaheim loses to Oakland tonight, it would fall to one, meaning a single Boston win in the next seven games would clinch a playoff berth.

Caveat: Magic numbers always confuse me, especially in multi-team wild-card races. :) But I think the above figures are correct.

Meanwhile, the Sox are within 3 1/2 games of the Yankees for the American League East lead. New York has six games left; Boston has seven. The Yankees finish their season at home against Minnesota (90-66) and at Toronto (64-90). The Red Sox wrap things up at Tampa Bay (66-87) and Baltimore (74-80). The Yankees’ magic number to clinch the division is four, meaning that in the two teams’ remaining thirteen games, any combination of Yankee wins and Red Sox losses totalling four would give New York the crown. (Three would result in a tie and a one-game playoff for the title, which would be awesome.)

Hell is a little more crowded today, as one of the terrorists who was involved in the kidnapping and savage beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl has been killed in Pakistan.

This particular piece of subhuman terrorist scum, Amjad Hussain Farooqi, was also allegedly involved in a pair of assassination attempts on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

In addition to being political dynamite, it sounds like Barack Obama might make a damn good president:

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This sounds dangerously naive:

Getting three [presidential debates] “was much more important to us than any detail of the format,” says Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill.

So the Bush campaign got all the “format details” that Karl Rove felt were important to make Bush look good, and all the Kerry campaign got was a third debate? What a joke. Bush’s demand that there be only two debates was obviously a throwaway bargaining tactic anyway. So it sounds like Bush got everything for nothing.

Have the Democrats forgotten that Al Gore rhetorically won the 2000 debates hands down, and yet failed disastrously because of superficial things like appearances and sighs? The “details” matter, people.

Read the whole thing.

The first debate, focusing on foreign policy, is Thursday night in Miami.