The riots in Paris, apparently led primarily by Muslim youths, seem to be getting more serious. Drudge quotes the French interior minister as saying they are “well organized.” Here are some pictures.

UPDATE: Ed Cone writes: “La merde frappe le ventilateur.” Heh.

This is interesting:

Back in the 1990s, the French sneered at America for the Los Angeles riots. As the Chicago Sun-Times reported in 1992: “the consensus of French pundits is that something on the scale of the Los Angeles riots could not happen here, mainly because France is a more humane, less racist place with a much stronger commitment to social welfare programs.” President Mitterrand, the Washington Post reported in 1992, blamed the riots on the “conservative society” that Presidents Reagan and Bush had created and said France is different because it “is the country where the level of social protection is the highest in the world.”

InstaPundit has much more.

Eggheads find boy Mice serenade the lady Mousies

Hee hee :) “Eeeeee! Mi mi mi…” / Squeak to me only with thine Eyes / I wanna hold your Taiiiil / Ev’ry little Cheese seems to whisper, “Louise”… :) O Anthropomorphism, thy name is Stuart Little…Joe Loy, guestsquealing… :>

ST. LOUIS, Missouri (AP) — Songbirds may be the Sinatras of the animal world, but male mice can carry a tune too, say Washington University researchers who were surprised by what they heard.

Scientists have known for decades that male lab mice produce high-frequency sounds — undetectable by human ears — when they pick up the scent of a female mouse. This high-pitched babble is presumably for courtship, although scientists are not certain.

But it turns out those sounds are more complex and interesting than previously thought.

“It soon became … apparent that these vocalizations were not random twitterings but songs,” said researcher Timothy Holy. “There was a pattern to them. They sounded a lot like bird songs.”

[> See now, actually it’s Not so anthropomorphic. In similar circumstances the homo sapiens male’s high-pitched babble DOES consist of Random Twitterings. :> ~ the guestblogger :]

The findings by the researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are published online Tuesday in the journal Public Library of Science Biology.

If the analysis by the researchers is confirmed, mice can be added to the short list of creatures that sing in the presence of the opposite sex, including songbirds, humpback whales, porpoises, insects and, possibly, bats.

…[The researchers]…developed a way to hear the sounds by recording them on tape and reconstructing them four octaves lower. Holy said the mice sounds met two key criteria for song — distinct syllables and recurring themes, “like the melodic hook in a catchy tune.”

He said their finding is not just perception, but a “very careful quantitative analysis of sounds.”…

Read the whole thing, including how “The finding opens the possibility of using mice to study and develop treatments for autism and other communication disorders…” Also here again is the published study ~~ AND, an accompanying Synopsis for Idiots / checkthat / for the Lay person, thank goodness :), which explains among other things that “…mouse social encounters prompt many vocalizations…” and includes a link for downloading the recorded Song of the Lovesick Mouse. :>

(All righty then, how Say you, Mickey? MIKE! MIKE,that’s Doctor Mike I mean, of course. :)

I’m having technical difficulties posting to the blog with Blogger right now, hence the lack of updates… plus, I’ll probably be going to bed soon. My Moot Court paper is done, and I’m exhausted! I’m also still sick (hence not being in class)… but most of all, I need sleep.

LOL!! (Hat tip: my dad.)

Looks like quality entertainment… ;)

As if terrorism, bird flu, hurricanes and Moot Court briefs weren’t enough, Casey kindly gives us something else to worry about.

President Bush’s approval rating may be at 35%, according to the latest poll numbers, but hey — it could be worse! Nixon’s approval rating at this point in his second term (nine months before resigning) was 27%. Way to go, Dubya, you show that disgraced ex-president who’s boss! You da man! :)

Not much, apparently — or at least, not as much as Cooper can do. Aaron Brown is leaving CNN, essentially replaced by Anderson Cooper.

P.S. Here, apparently, is the text of the e-mail to CNN’s staff from network president Jonathan Klein.

And here is some criticism of Klein’s decision.

I won’t be able to watch the game — well, at least not the bulk of it — because of freakin’ Moot Court, but there’s a college football contest tonight that holds a lot of interest for me: UConn at West Virginia at 7:30 PM on ESPN2.

My home-state Huskies, in their fourth year of Division 1-A football, will attempt to notch their first win against a ranked opponent in six tries. The Mountaineers, meanwhile, will try to move one step closer to a Big East championship and BCS berth, much to the detriment of my crazy Rutgers scenario.

West Virginia is favored by 15. But hey, you never know…

UPDATE: Well, that got ugly fast. It’s 28-3 West Virginia, early in the second quarter. Yikes.

UPDATE 2: West Virginia 45, UConn 13, final. D’oh!

Regarding the aforeblogged battery charge against USC linebacker Rey Maualuga, BoiFromTroy weighs in with a post provocatively titled “USC looking like late-’90s Miami“:

So this is the fourth brush-in with the law of current USC players in the last few years. It seems discipline is Coach Carroll’s number one weakness. On the field, it shows up in the form of stupid penalties, and off the field, it results in LAPD investigations.

Though only one of the four is currently playing–Winston Justice–USC needs to get it into their players’ heads that they are under greater scrutiny because they’re playing for a dynasty and that things like assault, or battery, which may get overlooked as dumb jock behavior at, say UCLA, will get you in trouble and on the front pages of the Sports section.

Kevin at FanBlogs chimes in:

Dynasty after dynasty has gone through a fall from grace brought on by their own ego and sense of invincibility. Miami, Florida State, and others have gone from dynasty to laughing stock as their players grew more & more bold in pushing the limits.

BoiFromTroy is spot on - if USC doesn’t address this now, they’ll be the University of Spoiled Crooks.

On a similar note — not to change the subject or anything, but — our resident Terps can’t be too happy about this.

I just told Becky that throwing one of my socks at the dog is “part of the sock’s slow journey across the room toward the laundry pile.” Now if that isn’t the ultimate statement of male sloth, I don’t know what is. :)

Red Sox ex-GM Theo Epstein denies he was driven away from the team by a power struggle with team president Larry Lucchino.

The Argentinian newspaper La Nacion interviewed Bush, and as part of said interview asked what he had in his pockets. The answer: virtually nothing. This is as one might expect, since he has handlers around to do, well, everything for him. Still, I thought he’d perhaps carry a lucky penny to worry over, or maybe a book of Psalms. More here, and for the linguistically gifted, excerpts from the interview (although they apparently left out the part about his pocket contents). (…or maybe my Spanish is really bad.)

(Another note: he apparently wears a Timex. So I guess all that spam I get that tells me he wears some expensive Swiss timepiece is just a lie.)

Posted by Brian (Briandot)

The New Britain Herald has a nice article about Mr. Hastings.

Pete Carroll and LenDale White played a bit of a Halloween prank on the rest of USC’s players Monday. (Hat tip: Scientizzle.) See also here. (Hat tip: Bruce Seltzer.)

Speaking of USC and Halloween, check out fellow ND 2L Lisa’s costume from Monday night’s Halloween party:

Heh. But c’mon, “FUSC” (rhymes with “tusk”) doesn’t have nearly as much oomph as “FUCLA” (rhymes with “truck-duh”) when you say it out loud. :) Now that’s what I call “communicative impact”! (Ugh, just shoot me now…)

On a more serious note, Trojan linebacker Rey Maualuga is in a spot of trouble.

Professors Nagle and Garnett offered high praise for Judge Alito Monday.

Connecticut’s Congressional delegation was less enthusiastic:

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., said he was disappointed that Bush chose to nominate “a top choice of the extreme right rather than a mainstream jurist” and dismayed that he did not pick a woman or minority.

Rep. Christopher Shays, R-4, was also discouraged by the choice.

“It seems to me we need a replacement for Sandra Day O’Connor that has a similar record of moderation and jurisprudence. I’m disappointed that the president didn’t take this opportunity to add diversity to the Supreme Court,” he said.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, said the president “squandered” an opportunity to nominate a justice who would unify the country.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., held back, saying he did not know enough about Alito to say whether he would support him.

Lieberman is the only one whose opinion really matters, since he’s a member of the “Gang of 14.”