Because you guys have been lazy:

Beer

There's a flavor ranking below Miller? Yuck.

Re: Bert's award

All the more reason to drink Coors! Delicious, magical Banquet Beer is the only thing I miss over here. Seriously, 90% of ALL BEER over here is "Taiwan Beer" which ranks a little below Miller in taste, which isn't bad. But dark beer is near impossible to find.

On a side note here's a funny/sad/infuriating story about the TSA's utter crappiness. And they're going to start doing similar things on Amtrak trains I hear.

Making the All-Star fiasco more exciting

I personally think home run derby is the best part of baseball. I also enjoy drinking. So I'm pleased to present this drinking game for home run derby. Slaps, since you're in the future, don't ruin it and tell us who wins.

Bert's award

...is that Anheuser-Busch is no longer an American owned company.

Radiohead

I say yes. I'm a fan of OK Computer, I used to have The Bends but I seem to have misplaced it. I haven't heard their other albums.

And that is Busch beer, my friend. Do I win anything?

Radiohead?

Is that really a serious question? That's like asking if you should read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas at least once in your lifetime.

(Answer: Yes, you should, but after its over you may wonder what the hell everyone thought was so great about it. Dirty hippies.)

Question

Radiohead: yea or nay? Seriously, are they worth even checking out? Or will I bored like I was when I tried Coldplay?

Also, a treat: What beer is this? John, you can't guess. I'm sure you already know. Hint: it was on sale at 7-11 .

Minor league baseball is better than MLB

I give you three pieces of evidence - a crazy ninja foul ball girl and 2 manager explosions. I rest my case.

Re: Will and beer

It's an interesting hypothesis, but I wonder if the author looks into the propensity for Asian populations to fewer copies of the alcohol dehydrogenase gene or less active forms. That being said, I'll go ahead and assume my immortality with my beer consumption.

Just for Bert:

lolcats! c'mon, man!

I think if we need a link to any site it is i can has cheezburger.

Changes

Added some links to the right. Let me know if we should have any others or you have some recommendations.

Beer = Civilization?

Who would've thought? George Will argues that beer is (well, maybe was) essential in the progress of civilization. Indeed, it is a health food.

Didn't we already know this?

From today's headlines: Memoir says Madonna's true love is herself

Venerating Helms at NR

This post by some guy named James Antle at the American Spectator's Blog gets the tone about right, I think:

"Helms did have an actual, regrettable record as a racial segregationist early in his career (though he did in fact shift toward color-blind rhetoric and policies later in his career, even if he didn't apologize for his past statements). He defended policies that hurt and denied opportunities to his black fellow Americans. Conservatives should not minimize that or pretend he was an early Ward Connerly. Neither should they discard all recognition of Helms's real, substantial, and, yes, admirable accomplishments just because he was, like all of us, a product of his time and place."

(My only quibble here is that I think the "product of time and place" argument grows less convincing as interconnectivity through technology increases. Obviously, a kid raised in Massachusetts in the 1940's has a much different experience than a kid raised in Alabama, but as time goes on I think that experiential gap decreases. In other words, the "product of time and place" argument holds truer for, say, Thomas Jefferson than it does for Jesse Helms, and truer for Jesse Helms than it does for us.)

National Review's adulatory coverage of his death and life seems to be suggesting that anyone who points out his racist past and tendencies is a frothing mad leftist liberal, and runs the deeper risk of conflating "states rights" arguments with segregation as part of the pantheon of conservative positions. Many of the conservatives I have known (among those, ones I have respected and worked for) seem all too willing to wax nostalgic about their Dixie roots, unaware of the damage and perceptions they cast of themselves. This, to put it mildly, is a problem.

Hitchens v. Helms

I'm not fully aprised of Helms biography, but there is little in Hitchens's column about Helms that is disgraceful. I am a reluctant Hitchens fan, but from time to time his moralizing wears on me. Also a trotskyite(ist?) critique of Helms admirably staunch anti-communism gets nowhere with me. Hitchens's cold war allegiance (or lack thereof) manages to sneak out occasionally despite his present neocon foreign policy leanings.

Perhaps Helms was a racist. I don't know. Perhaps he was a philistine when it came to art. (Very few Americans aren't through little fault of their own. And the "art" in the Hart building is horrific BTW.) However, opposing the MLK holiday is not obviously racist nor was it wrong. MLK has been whitewashed (forgive the word choice) much more than Helms has been. Supporting white Africans was certainly not politically correct, and perhaps Helms's motivations were impure. Again I don't know. However, the merits of these positions would seem to be vindicated by recent events in South Africa and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) as far as concern for Africa goes and as concerns America's interests.

The idea that segregation and bigotry were Helms's driving concerns seems simplistic at best, and is a convenient way to attempt to discredit his conservative positions.

Slaps

You're boy is apparently some kind of hero now. Saved a dude from choking to death. Chiefs might suck but now Tony Gonzalez can add saving some dude's life to his list of awesome things (TE reception records, swimming with a marlin, etc.).

Re: Fine

In fact, forget the refinery. And the blackjack!

Now the question is...1 $300 hooker or 300 $1 hookers?

No, I'm sorry...

It makes a nice story, but the legacy of Jesse Helms is more complicated and more disgraceful than NR makes it out to be. The fact that conservatives of the pen cannot seem to acknowledge that (or do so only in passing) is one of the reasons they are fixing to get whalloped in November.