As if we weren't already short of time to get everything done. Now this notice that our days (and nights) have just gotten shorter:

"THE Earth’s rotation may have been permanently accelerated by the force of the Asian earthquake, scientists said last night, as it emerged that the tsunamis created by it were the deadliest great waves in more than a century.

Richard Gross, a geophysicist with NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory in California, said that a shift of mass towards the Earth’s centre had caused the planet to spin one millionth of a second faster and to tilt about an inch on its axis."

Big deal. We just move Michael Moore to the top of Mt. McKinley to offset the shift.

Read this by Ben Stein. Pause for a moment. Think. Give thanks.

Merry Christmas! Or Happy P.C. Whatever.

Last month we posted a link to an article: "A Pat Tillman for Wall Street." It is a touching story of a Marine that died in action in the assault on Fallujah.

We need to be reminded in this Christmas and Hanukkah season that many are still fighting for our freedom. We had a reminder yesterday in Mosul. Go read Belmont Club here for the definitive take on that story.

Posted this week on the American Spectator's site is a letter from Dimitri Gavriel's dad. It is a good read, and should be must reading for those of us at home, sitting in our warm houses or offices. Semper Fi, Dimitri and Chris Gavriel.

Must. Solve. Dearth. Of. Posting. Problem.

Go read/watch this to see what happened to the media in 2004. From the vantage point of the year 2014. Thanks to Jonah Goldberg at The Corner.

Then go check this out. Same source. Blame him.

OK. Anyone want to try and tell me that Mr. Muir is not doing this to me on purpose?

Anyone?

Anyone?

Another Poll! This time for the most oblivious person of 2004. As would be expected, the competition is quite fierce. Go to The Link, read the article, and then vote for one of the real candidates (right now, Michael Moore is way out front, with my choice, Theresa Heinz Kerry, in a distant second).

Then feel free to suggest alternate contenders in our comments. Be sure to tell us why your contender deserves nomination.

My first nominee is, collectively, the floor staff at our local Best Buy. The handful of non-Obliviots I have encountered there somewhat offset the rest, but why not just put 'em all behind a cash register, if they can't answer a question in their department or even be bothered answer a page over the store's PA for a customer standing there with money in his/her hand? Amazon, anyone?

Thanks to Mike Straka at Fox News.com.

Anyone out there who has knowledge and a bit of time to kill that would like to make the cases (or paste links to really good discussions that have already happened) between Mac/Final Cut Pro and Wintel/Premiere/et al based machines in the comments? (If the discussion gets extensive I will archive the thread for other users benefits.)

Fire away.

Funniest and truest statement I have heard lately:

"If you have ever bought anything from The Sharper Image, you could be giving more to charity."

Do you know how many conspiracy theories now have to be re-written?

Also: Hat Tip to Tim Blair for heavy lifting on this stuff. Go see his new blog!

In related news, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC announced they would "go on indefinite hiatus due to a lack of meaningful news stories now that the Peterson trial has ended."

Ah! Joy, if it were so. Alas, it is not.

The good professor, Glenn Reynolds, on The Engineers Who Saved Christmas. Really.

Muir's just toying with you, Walser. Repeat after me: "It's only a cartoon. It's only a cartoon. It's only a cartoon."

UPDATE: This post (and the first comment, at least) will make more sense if you are viewing the Saturday Day By Day.

As Walsingham has so noted, Chris Muir has returned after a hiatus and to help get him ramped back up we will be featuring the cartoon on the banner until such time as we see fit or we can afford a badly needed site re-design.

As has the little black dress!

Nat, I demand a Permalink!

"No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory."

Bush? No, Roosevelt, circa 1941. Hat tip to Powerline. Read the whole thing.

Churchill on the events of 7 December 1941:

"To have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. Now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all!...Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder."

Sony is being ridiculous in its dealings with blogger Jason Kottke. I don't have any legal expertise to offer and it is not at the point where Mr. Kottke needs financial assistance....but I can do this:

I am in the market for a new External DVD Burner/Player and the DRU-710A may have just been relegated to second choice.

Sony is a great company, though....this strikes me as the equivalent of the over-eager CBS producer who broke into regular programming with the announcement of Arafat's death.

Perhaps the end result should be the same.

This makes me think back a few years to the Oscar night when Elia Kazan received an award for Lifetime Achievement and all of those courageous-only-by-the-Hollywood-definition fellow artists sat on their hands as a protest to Kazan's involvement in the McCarthy/Hollywood Blacklist event in the 1950's.

So, yes, I remember you, Ed Harris, and Amy Madigan, and Nick Nolte, et al who were so smugly showing off your "principles" on your sleeves that night and I am comparing it to what I hear from you now, when someone is actually killed for his art, rather than relegated to ghost writing for a few years later to be lionized for all time.

It might all be worth it if we could now stop hearing about Ring Lardner and Dalton Trumbo and John Ashcoft's Amerika™ for the eleventy-billionth time from these people.

But we won't.

What a sorry lot.