A new bowling career high, by 1 pin: 138! (The picture is of Steve, not me, but that's roughly how I looked when I got the fateful 8 on my tenth frame to clinch the 138.)

Not that this is remotely a surprise, but it’s now official: Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Stan and Wilma have been retired from the Atlantic hurricane name list. (Hat tip: Jon Schoenwetter.) That’s yet another record for the incredible 2005 hurricane season: the most names retired in a single year. They’ll be replaced in 2011 by Don, Katia, Rina, Sean and Whitney. The Storm Track has more.

In a related story, another cyclone is nearing Australia. (Hat tip: Melanie Dickson, our resident Aussie.) Australia is new Gulf Coast, apparently.

Let the games begin! usa vs canada on the left, denmark vs sweden i think, ireland vs scotland, and japan vs aussies on right. curious crowd!

He said / He said / He said. :|

To leak What exactly, we don’t know.

…Libby’s participation in a critical conversation with [NYTimes reporter Judith] Miller on July 8, 2003 “occurred only after the vice president advised the defendant that the president specifically had authorized defendant to disclose certain information in the National Intelligence Estimate,” the papers by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald stated. The filing did not specify the “certain information.”

“Defendant testified that the circumstances of his conversation with reporter Miller — getting approval from the president through the vice president to discuss material that would be classified but for that approval – were unique in his recollection,” the papers added.

Rmmph.

Whole thing.

AOL Poll:
Are you surprised by the court filing saying Bush OK’d a leak on Iraq?

No 82%
Yes 18%
Total Votes: 106,817

Guestblogger Kristy LaPlante, of Women’s Final Four liveblogging fame, will be again blogging live via cell phone tonight — from the World Men’s Curling Championship in Lowell, MA. Cool! :)

Heh.

Apparently, Wisconsin is pulling its troops out of Iraq. Or something. (Hat tip: A Nun Mouse, who was probably hoping that I would post something slightly less glib. Oh, well.)

Blogger of the Year Captain Ed agrees with me that the new South Park episode (which airs again at 10:00 PM and midnight tonight on Comedy Central; if you haven’t seen it yet, you MUST!), is positively brilliant (warning: spoilers!). “South Park may be raunchy and tasteless,” Ed writes, “but it has become the bravest voice for freedom and common sense in modern entertainment.”

Ed thinks there won’t actually be a “Part 2″ to the allegedly two-part “Cartoon Wars” episode. I sincerely hope he’s wrong, but after canvassing general blogospheric opinion via Technorati, I see that he’s not the only one who suspects this. We’ll find out next Wednesday at 10pm. (Er, unless Comedy Central “pusses out.” Heh.)

Another thing I noticed via Technorati: a lot of people think this was “an episode about Family Guy,” and seem (somehow) to be missing the broader point. Yes, Family Guy was lampooned, and as this post points out (again - spoiler alert!), SP’s writers genuinely do have a thing against FG, apparently… but if you watched that episode and didn’t think it was “about” more than Family Guy… wow. In reality, it was satirizing about three or four different things at once, which is what made it so amazingly awesome, IMHO; it had multiple levels, or “layers,” like an onion or a donkey. :) But clearly, its central, overarching theme was the Mohammed cartoons and media self-censorship, not Family Guy.

Anyway, although most bloggers who posted about the episode liked it (well, except for offended Family Guy fans), CalPatriot thinks the Mohammed cartoon aspect is stupid. Personally, I don’t understand how you can assert with a straight face that “free speech needs no protection at its political epicenter” given all the recent developments involving the FCC, Scientology, media self-censorship in the wake of the Mohammad cartoons, and about a dozen other things I could mention. No, we’re not on the brink of losing our First Amendment rights, but there are some disturbing trends — most of them involving the principle of “free speech” rather than the legal right (indeed, of the three examples I cited above, only the FCC one involves state action) — which I think South Park points out wonderfully. Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s take on the the cravenness of the sellout media establishment, and the P.C. movement’s insistence on unquestioned obedience to the god of “sensitivity” and “tolerance,” rings absolutely true with me. Agree or disagree, I don’t think it’s fair to say that the episode had “no real point.”

Anyway, regardless of your take on the issue, or on South Park (and yes, the Virgin Mary episode was awful — mostly because it was simultaneously offensive and unfunny — but that doesn’t mean Parker and Stone aren’t also capable of sheer brilliance), you really ought to watch this episode, if only to be able to engage in informed water-cooler discussion (side note: does anyone actually talk around water coolers anymore?), because I guarantee this one is going to get a lot of attention. (And please, stick with the episode past Mr. Garrison’s “Muslim sensitivity training” class, which struck me as the most potentially offensive part. Myself, I thought that was pretty funny, but even if you don’t, the second two-thirds of the episode is most definitely worth your time.)