While I'm still confused as to what, exactly, the target audience for this blog is, its been somewhat interesting checking the hit counter to see where they're all coming from. While I'm not exactly surprised by the number of searches for "making of a gadol (with all sorts of variations)," the number of searches for Tara Zinsen stuns me, frankly speaking. Some notable others: "george noory arab," "nobody's complaining about Saddam," and, last but certainly not least, "bill cheany." Well, I guess the mere fact that people not from the YU library are, in fact, finding and reading this at all is gratifying -- if not somewhat disturbing. Not to imply that I have anything against anyone who reads protocols from the YU library. Keep up the good work.

Counting down to The Simpson's 300th episode? Here's some reading material to help kill the time.

Is there some way we can get a transcript of Senator Byrd's filibuster speech? Better yet, is C-SPAN going to release it as a 6 DVD set, complete with voice-over commentary by angry republicans? This has to happen.

In the meantime, it seems that a Missouri judge ruled that Jesus could not represent a Richard John Adams in court, but only due to his lack of a law license. Being dead, apparantly, is not an issue in Missouri. Sort of fits with the whole lawyer=vampire theme, no?

I was reading Maureen Dowd's op-ed in today's Times, when I started thinking. Her basic point was that as opposed to the actual content of the bin Laden tape, where he:

barely mentioned the Iraqi leader and seemed to be holding his nose when he gave permission to his Qaeda brethren to fight "the Crusaders" alongside Saddam's Baath Party, "even if we believe and declare that the socialists are apostates," and whether Saddam remains in power or not.

There seems to be a brewing controversy over exactly what "Bin Laden" may or may not have said in "his" address on al-jazeera today (or is it already yesterday? man, I need sleep). At least according to Justin Raimondo. It's really a shame neither he nor any of us actually speak Arabic.

Does anyone think there's any connection at all between the Official Terror Alert Level being raised to orange and Garry Kasparov settling for a quick draw in the deciding game of his match with Deep Junior, an Israeli-programmed machine? I didn't think so. Still, the match was really really cool, as chess goes, and with the exception of one really obvious bad move that cost Kasparov the third game, exceptionally well-played on both sides.