Here’s an excerpt from a conversation I had today with a neighbor of mine, who for some ungodly reason was mowing his lawn in 92-degree heat: Me: “Hot enough for you out here?” Neighbor (cutting his engine): “What’s that?” Me: “I say, is it hot enough for ya’ today?” Neighbor (wiping brow with forearm): “You bet. ‘s hotter’n a witch’s tit, in fact. Ain’t that what they say? — hotter

Stephen Schwartz’s Weekly Standard piece, “All the Hate That’s Fit to Print,” takes a close look at the American Muslim media. Not surpisingly, Schwartz finds some troubling rhetoric emanating from the non-mainstream periodicals: When the shooter who chose July 4 to start a gun battle at Los Angeles airport’s El Al ticket counter turned out to be Hesham Mohamed Hadayet — an Egyptian native with a ‘Read Koran’ sticker on

“Hypocrites!”

It occurred to me at the time, too, but I failed to note it here. To my shame. So now I’m noting it here (to my credit): That attempt on Chirac’s life? Very Day of the Jackal. (Note: Sadly, I’ve never read the Forsyth book. But the film is an absolute classic in the genre of political thrillers. If you haven’t yet seen it, get your ass to a video

The New Statesmen takes a look at Harvard psychology professor Jerome Kagan’s new book, Surprise, Uncertainty and Mental Structures, in which the professor makes the argument that psychiatry and psychology have failed. According to Dr. Kagan: […] Talking cures, as in psychotherapy, or having people fill out questionnaires, as psychologists so often do, simply do not get at the internal schemata that drive and colour so much of our behaviour.

The National Review juxtaposes the State Department’s recent Iran statements with those of the President — revealing a clear disconnect between State’s foreign policy strategies and those favored by Bush himself: […] it is worth dwelling on this telling and dismaying episode, to which end NRO reproduces the two dueling statements — one representing [Foggy Bottom press flack] Boucher’s Iranian policy, the other President Bush’s — below. Boucher’s briefing: QUESTION:

Beer giveth life. Beer taketh life away.

…well, I guess “Mork” was kinda funny. Wasn’t it…?

An Open Letter in Support of the People of Iran from the Weblogging Community… We are not politicians, nor are we generals. We hold no power to dispatch diplomats to negotiate; we can send no troops to defend those who choose to risk their lives in the cause of freedom. What power we have is in our words, and in our thoughts. And it is that strength which we offer