Good speech from the "dark lord" Karl Rove. Warning: Liberals will not enjoy this.

Remember to take the MIT Weblog Survey fellow bloggers.

Saddam has gone from feared dictator to token celebrity status. It's like he's a famous reality tv star now. Man! What I wouldn't have given to have a family size bag of doritos (his favorite snack) while I was on a convoy.

I loved Batman Begins! The first 45 minutes are edited a little choppy but thats Nolan's way of doing things I guess. Once you're caught up on the back story and we get into the creation of the Batman it gets so freakin awesome! I loved how everything he used had a purpose and a believable history. Like the batmoblie was a bridging vehicle designed for use by the military but never contracted out. Or that his bat ears hide sensitive microphones to pick up conversations. The hallucination scenes are trippy and actually somewhat scary . I loved the scene where the scarecrow was trippin and thought the batman was like this dark demon straight from the pits of hell with pools of drool coming from his fangs. And somehow Gary Oldman made a cheap pair of glasses and a really fake mustache turn into a Gordon character we can care about. The whole good cop amongst the corrupt worked really well. And finally I loved Gordon's point about escalation at the end. How he questions whether a crime fighter in a bat suit will not really solve Gotham's problems, but only add to them by creating even more sinister bad guys. And then the foreshadowing of the joker....can't wait till the next one! I really like Nolan's vision of Gotham city and the Batman. Hopefully he won't screw up, like putting nipples on the batsuit, but things seem well off in his hands

You spill ketchup on your bosses slacks. He then e-mails you and explains the dry cleaning fee was 4 pounds.....and your reply e-mail gets forwarded all over the country and makes it to cnn.com.

Great article about the relationship between Lucas and Spielberg. Money quote:

And so Lucas has been drawn back to Star Wars with an air of glum fatalism, while Spielberg puts on ever more ambidextrous displays of reach and range. Lucas may well win the box-office battle this summer, but Spielberg looks like he's won the war.

I guess they can both live in harmony together knowing that each have their little pet projects that aren't all that good. Lucas has his Star Wars prequals and Spielberg has his Jurassic Park triology.

God bless you Billy Graham.

Duke University has released the results of their ipod giveaway program. At the beginning of the Academic year they gave an ipod to every freshmen with the intention of professors using them in their courses of instruction. In the end Duke will not hand out ipods to every freshman next year but only those in courses that require ipods. The report can be found here at the University's website and seen in PDF format here.

Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, has taken to the Senate floor recently and chastied the treatment of prisoners in Gitmo. In doing so he compared American service men and women to Nazis. Way to go dick.

DNC chairman Howard Dean rips into the Republican Party by calling it largely made up of "white Christians". Hard to believe since Dean is a white christian and the chairman of the RNC is Jewish.

Here is an insightful article about a rare breed of politician. These are elected representatives that serve in the United States Military Reserve. Sadly no one in the Senate is currently serving in the Reserves and there is only one active reservist in the House. All that do serve come from state legislatures.

URGENT: If I advised you on 6.7.2005 I need your schedule. Please e-mail it to me after you are done registering. I cannot file your permanent folder until you do so. Thanks guys.

Links and tips for incomming students

Academic Advising Suggestions and Links.

Here are some Helpful Links :

Student Success Center
Circle Park Online
Student Involvement
University Homepage
Arts and Sciences Homepage
College of Business Homepage
College of Education Homepage
College of Nursing Homepage
College of Engineering Homepage
Career Services
Center for Leadership Development (See Ignite program)

Helpful Tips and reminders:
-Remeber your schedule is a working schedule and can be changed around all summer via CPO.
-Design your fall schedule to help you succeed. You need a 2.75 GPA to keep your Hope Scholarship!
-Don't forget the Drop a class policy we went over!
-Follow the rules, Fill in the blanks!
-Hold on to your Curriculum Guide and Handbook for the duration of your college career.
-Classes begin August 24th!
-If you have any questions or comments you can e-mail me or you can post a comment or question by following the "comment" link below.

Good Luck.

There's no end in sight of the quagmire we've gotten ourselves into. Only it's not in Iraq, it's in Europe, sixty years afterD-Day and our attempt at nation building has gone horribly wrong.

Going after Tom Delay might end up biting some Congressmen in the ass. Especially a certain Congressman from my home state, Harold Ford, Jr. Money quote:

From 1998 to 2003, he took 61 privately funded trips. During that period, he failed to file a single travel-disclosure form with the House clerk, as required by the chamber's ethics rules.

Of course having your uncle arrested for taking bribes doesn't help too much either. VOLuntarilyConserative has a good roundup.

In an earlier post I talked about Amnesty International's decree about our detention facilities as the leading cause of others commiting torture, but the real money quote was when Amnesty called Gitmo the 'gulag of our time'. Now the President of AI is saying he's not sure if it's a gulag or not. Brilliant.

More coverage here and here.

This sounds familiar. A women who apparently fled from her family has been found seven years later. It was originally thought she was kidnapped. Instead she was fleeing from her mother after having an argument with her over her grades at Texas A & M. Hmmmmm. Should she be treated the same as the runaway bride?

Update

Here is another article going into detail about the Tennessee Waltz undercover sting that I blogged about earlier. What was most damning is the fact that Senator Ford took $50,000 and was caught on tape.

Ford is accused of taking a series of payoffs totaling $55,000 between August and April. The FBI made video or audio recordings of all but one of those exchanges of cash, Jackson said. On another recording they catch him saying "send me a little money."

Ouch.

Check out the Wired Campus Blog about the evolution of education technology. Pay particular interest to the' space creators' entry about the first ever computer video game invented. IThe computer to run it only cost about $120,000 and you could shoot at asteroids or rather really, really big pixels. Fun for the whole family.

Opposing viewpoints on the situation with the EU constitution crisis. This article by associated press reporter Ann Gearan suggest the crisis if it worsens will have a negative impact on the Bush Administration becuase of their conserted efforts to mend fences after the Iraq War. Not having a unified Europe will make it much more difficult to squeeze those cooperative juices together.

The European Union seems to be in disarray just at the time the administration is willing to work with the EU.

However John O'Sullivan writes that a Europe in dissary wouldn't be such a bad thing at all, but rather an opportunity for the US to come in and mediate a deal. Amusingly called Plan B.

In reality there is always a Plan B, even if the politicians avoid considering it until Plan A has collapsed. Under this particular Plan B, the United States would rescue Turkey and the EU from their joint crises while also advancing U.S. interests in transatlantic integration.

Read both.

Job Description
Wanted: Someone with good people skills that enjoys swanky dinners, NBA basketball games, gambling in Mississippi, and spending weekends in Miami. All expenses paid, no out of pocket money.

Sound too good to be true? Well it's not. It's exactly what undercover FBI agents did to nab Rep. Ford who works for my homestate. Those criminals don't make Volboy very happy buts its nice to see some FBI agents doing their job.... aptly named the Tennessee Waltz. White Collar Crime Prof Blog has more.