*Two* of you will get this one in its entirety.

But both of you will laugh heartily. The rest of you can suffer in eye-rolling silence. Except for Hilary. She'll be vocal about it.



[Via the best college football blog of all time, Every Day Should Be Saturday.]

P.J. O'Rourke mulls his mortality.

A funny and touching piece at the L.A. Times about his reaction to a cancer diagnosis.

God knows this stuff. He's God. He's all-knowing. What am I telling him, really? "Gosh, you sure are a good God. Good -- you own it. Plus you're infinitely wise, infinitely merciful, but ... look, everybody makes mistakes. A little cancer of the behind, it's not a big mistake. Not something that's going on your personal record. There's no reason it can't be, well ... reversed, is there?"

No doubt death is one of those mysterious ways in which God famously works. Except, on consideration, death isn't mysterious. Do we really want everyone to be around forever? I'm thinking about my own family, specifically a certain stepfather I had as a kid. Sayonara, you s.o.b.

Napoleon was doubtless a great man in his time -- at least the French think so. But do we want even Napoleon extant in perpetuity? Do we want him always escaping from island exiles, raising fanatically loyal troops of soldiers, invading Russia and burning Moscow?

Well, at the moment, considering Putin et al, maybe we do want that. But, century after century, it would get old. And what with Genghis Khan coming from the other direction all the time and Alexander the Great clashing with a Persia that is developing nuclear weapons and Roman legions destabilizing already precarious Israeli-Palestinian relations -- things would be a mess.

Has he become one of the tribe? He was raised Protestant and explained why that happened in one of his books, but he seems to be giving off beadsqueezer vibes in this one. Starting with the beadsqueezing reference.

Clusterfunk.

At the risk of boring you stiff (or creating a new genre of horror writing where Ben Bernanke wanders around moaning "Braiiiiiiiinnnnns") with the bailout stuff, I'll limit myself to two thoughts.

First, we had no leadership yesterday. None. Bush, being a lame duck and having cashed in his credibility chips, can't count.

But no one else stepped up. Not McCain, not Obama, not anyone in the House. No. Buh. Dee.

And a special Order of Demerit to San Fran Nan, whose shrieky partisanship failed to carry the day. Oddly enough. That wasn't a reason to vote against the package, and it was stupid for the GOP to say so. But her behavior did a nice job of squelching the argument that we are indeed, facing a crippling crisis. Instead, it's partisan point scoring as usual.

Imagine Churchill saying in 1940:

"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. Plus a boot to the arse of the brain-dead Labourites whose blinkered pacificism helped lead us to this precipice."

Not good.

Second: your head to the hills advice o' the day.

Pleasant surprise.

I see from trusty SiteMeter that this is the best traffic month in the past calendar year--over 10,000 page views and 8100 visits.

I've had higher traffic, but only on bad personal news, so I'm happier with this result. Not sure why it's going up--only one full-blown Sheavalanche--but it's nice to see.

If you're new here, welcome, and feel free to identify yourself and/or codes/locations for your accounts and valuables. If you're a lurker here, and want to delurk anonymously, have at it. If you'd just like to post one of those obnoxious "FRIST!!" [sic]-type comments, it's a free country and an authoritarian blog.

How about "bailout month"?

Britain's financial sector is tottering (more like Europe's actually), showing that the American malady is a worldwide problem.

There are indications the giant European bank Fortis could go under.

Good news? Of sorts. The oil price continues to plummet and the dollar is getting stronger by the hour.

Just might want to fastball debate on the bailout, lads.

That was fun.

Unless you were a Badger.



[Photo credit David Guralnick, Detroit News.]

I'm proud to say I've now seen the two biggest comebacks in Michigan football history.

Because you asked for it!

Consider it a late bill for six years of unpaid subscriptions. Yes: six years of free brilliance. Feel the guilt...

Never been prouder.

Last night was the last soccer game of the season. They lost, 3-2, and Dale was in net for the deciding goal.

Therein lies the triumph.

Dale went in with his team down 2-1 in the second half, the coach's choice. Early in the half, he went to the ground to gobble up a ball in the goal. The girl on the other team followed through and kicked him in the head, just behind the ear.

A tearing shriek. The game stopped and we rushed out. Heather talked to him and he slowly got up into a sitting position. I asked her to take Louis. The coach called for his son to take Dale's place in net.

Dale asked if he was bleeding, and I assured him he was not. I checked him over closely and there wasn't a welt or any other damage, nor sign of a bruise.

I asked him if he was all right, and told him his team was depending on him. He said yes, and stayed in. The coach called off his son and high-fived mine. The other team's sideline applauded, as did ours.

For the rest of the game, he played the same way as before the kick to the head--aggressively (probably too aggressively) charging to the ball, and falling down to cover, follow through kicks be damned. Then flinging the ball out to his teammates to go on the attack. Matthew's dad came up to me and said "Your boy's going to need hockey goalie pads!" He let what turned out to be the deciding goal in and was very upset. I ran out to the net, wiped the snot off his nose and said "Win or lose, son, I am so proud of you. Don't worry about it and keep playing--you're doing the best you can." The tears stopped and he nodded out an OK. The game started up again and he charged the attackers in the zone, time and again.

"Boy, he's tough," one of our team's mom's said.

The Raiders didn't lose, they literally ran out of time, the whistle blown as they threatened to score again. But Dale sprinted off the field a winner anyway, no hint of shame on his face, proud admiration on mine.

So the Dow loses, what, 15% today?

I'm not being flippant, either.

A Meeting at Corvallis.

And USC did its best Norman-Arminger-at-room-temperature impression.

Heh, heh, heh.

Go Beavers!

New in an intermittent series.

Whatever problems I have with Islamic theology and practice, I freely admit that I love a lot of the art and architecture produced by the various strands of the religion, from giant mosques and madrassas to something as simple as candlesticks.

So, from time to time I'll be posting pictures of stuff I have particularly liked, and explanations of the meaning of the same to the best of my amateur(ish?) ability.

Today's is the Ottoman Turkish masterpiece known as the Selimiye Mosque. Located in Edirne (ancient Adrianople), the first European capital of the Ottoman Empire, the Selimiye was the towering achievement of one of the greatest architects of all time, Sinan. Sinan was born to Christian parents in Anatolia and was taken and forcibly converted to Islam as part of the horrific devshirme child-levy. [As occurred frequently with devshirme men, he did not forget where he came from and once intervened to protect Christians from a rapacious tax collector]. Too old to be inducted into the elite Janissary corps, he was shuffled off to administration and learned engineering instead. Sinan excelled in this field and it wasn't long before his talent was recognized and he was given more and more building projects. In fact, in Sinan's case, something analogous to "George Washington Slept Here" occurred--hundreds of structures in Turkey are claimed for him, though it is unlikely in the extreme that he hand a hand in the majority of them. But the Selimiye (named for Sultan Selim II) is definitely his baby:



The Selimiye was explicitly designed to best Hagia Sophia (the Ottomans were tired of hearing about how they had nothing to compare to this Christian achievement) in size, but does not quite do so.

This is the magnificent dome:



Here is a nice set of pictures by a tourist. Note how the dome "lights up" even on a foggy day.

This is the minbar (not that minbar, B5 fans) or pulpit:



The interior on a brighter day:



[Picture Credit]

Finally, as with all Ottoman architecture of the 16th-17th Centuries, you have to consider the Iznik tilework:



[Photo credit]

Here is an interesting article about the revival of the Iznik tile production methods, which had been long lost.