Louisiana's Road to Nowhere

Despite its name, Interstate 49 runs entirely within Louisiana, connecting the cities of Lafayette and Shreveport. The highway will link New Orleans and Kansas City, if existing plans are carried out.

I appreciate the existence of this road on the 1,104-mile jaunt between Florida and Dallas, because it makes possible a jump from I-10 to I-20 while still making good time westward. But it could be the most featureless interstate I've ever driven.

There's nothing to recommend this drive. No cities or stops of interest, aside from a Semolina restaurant in Alexandria I loved until a suspect shrimp dish made me decree a no-seafood policy on road trips. No Kodak moments. No nice hotels. No traffic.

The lack of traffic's a plus, of course, but it raises the question of how such a little-needed highway got built. I'd love to find out which Louisiana politician had enough juice in Washington to get I-49 funded in the '60s and '70s.

I think I-49 induced boredom motivated another driver to road rage. Without provocation, he intentionally kept himself in my blind spot for a half hour, whether I was driving 65 mph or 85 mph. (Seemed like a dumb thing to do in a car with federal license plates that identified his agency and vehicle.)

The only sizeable city is Alexandria, but the highway deftly avoids any of its picturesque or historic areas. The last two times I've stopped, I didn't find anything but miles of grubby commercial strip malls and uninviting hotels on MacArthur Drive, so I jumped back on I-49 and kept going.

2005/07/21 · 8 COMMENTS · Link

Markos Moultisas of Daily Kos is a traitor to this country, according to evidence uncovered on RedState about comedian Margaret Cho's dog:

A minor point, naming one's dog after a terrorist, and lauding those who do? Yes. But a helpful reminder nonetheless of a phrase worth remembering: they're not antiwar -- just on the other side.

Don't tell anyone, but I named a dog after Molly Ivins.

Politics · 2005/07/17 · Comment · Link

El Prodigio de Rafael Palmeiro

A commenter on SportsFilter echoes the sentiment of a lot of baseball fans, describing Rafael Palmeiro as "very good for a long time, but never great."

There are two reasons Palmeiro's Hall of Fame credentials should be absolutely beyond question.

Most consecutive 100-RBI, 35-home run seasons in Major League history:

Jimmie Fox	9
Rafael Palmeiro	9

Players with at least 3,000 hits and 500 home runs:

	HR	RBI
Hank Aaron	755	3,771
Willie Mays	660	3,283
Rafael Palmeiro	566	3,001
Eddie Murray	504	3,255

Palmeiro's a humble player and boring interview, but these numbers speak for themselves. The suggestion by Skip Bayless that he doesn't belong in the Hall should forever disqualify him from the practice of sportswriting.

Sports · 2005/07/17 · 4 COMMENTS · Link

Juan Cole on Alan Colmes

The best thing about the rise of liberal talk radio is the national forum it provides for voices outside of the tired Mort Kondracke-Eleanor Clift-Howard Fineman circle of D.C. insider talking heads.

Two recent examples from the Alan Colmes Radio Show were Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos and last night's guest, Middle East history professor and blogger Juan Cole.

I've attached a 23-minute podcast covering Cole's interview, which focused on the July 7 London terror attacks and the possibility the U.S. might have compromised an investigation of this plot by announcing the arrest of an Al Qaeda suspect in August 2004.

The high point was his reaction to a caller questioning his patriotism, which the normally even-temperated Cole took a lot more personally than I expected.

Politics · Podcasts · 2005/07/16 · Comment · Link

The Weekly Standard derides the top liberal weblogs as far-left and shrill:

What's more, the blogs take numerous positions that would strike all but the most passionate Democratic partisans as patently preposterous. For example, several of the left-wing blogs recently ran an advertisement that referred to West Virginia Senator and former Ku Klux Klan Kleagle Robert Byrd as an "American Hero."

The Drudge Retort was one of the liberal blogs that ran the ad, which was bought by the Friends of Robert C. Byrd Committee.

Running an ad is not the same thing as taking a position. On the Retort, I've yet to consider whether I agree with the viewpoint expressed in an ad before running it. Like The Nation, which catches hell every time it allows Fox News to advertise, I think you shouldn't choose or exclude advertisers based on the politics they espouse.

Politics · 2005/07/15 · 3 COMMENTS · Link

I'd Rather Fight Than Switch

Anil Dash, responding to Don Park's take on the Atom 1.0 launch:

Don, you raise a lot of really good points, but surely you can't argue that changes like clarifying the RSS 2.0 spec, transferring ownership to a neutral party, and embracing namespaces weren't at least partially motivated by the existence of Atom? Even if you don't like the feed format (and I'll gladly concede the API is much more interesting), Atom's the best thing that's ever happened to RSS, no?

No. If you compare today's RSS 2.0 specification to the one in July 2003, back when the Atom project was launched, you'll find only minor edits.

The Atom Syndication Format's an intriguing, well-specified protocol, but in the time it took the world's most democratic spec-drafting team to finish Atom 1.0, RSS 2.0 has grown at an astonishing rate. One of the reasons is that it was left alone: Dave Winer froze RSS before passing the spec to the Berkman Center, then helped RSS Advisory Board members fight the urge to thaw it.

And when I say Advisory Board members, I mean me. I still want to take an icepick to that thing.

As a syndication and weblog API dork, I like Atom, but I don't understand why it took longer to create Atom 1.0 than it took to invent XML 1.0 (approximate count from first announcement to recommendation: 450 days for XML, 725 for Atom). This is a syndication format, not a space shuttle. I knew they were in trouble when the project became mired in a three-month-long bikeshed discussion over what to name the format.

Still, as someone who knows the pain of getting anywhere near a specification, I congratulate the developers who emerged alive from the two-year struggle to create and standardize Atom. And I for one welcome our new syndication overlords.

Rss · 2005/07/15 · 3 COMMENTS · Link

Robert Wilonsky: Fully Loaded

Dallas Observer film critic Robert Wilonsky:

To damn Herbie: Fully Loaded as soporific crap, as lazy profiteering, as yet another needless and cynical remake in a season populated by such con artists, would be as pointless as the movie itself. If you had any hope for it, you're either a Walt Disney executive or Gordon Buford, author of the story "Car-Boy-Girl" that birthed five prior features, including 1969's The Love Bug and the 1997 made-for-TV redo with Bruce Campbell in the Dean Jones role, and a short-lived TV series.

I've seen Fully Loaded recently with my kids, and the idea it's being subjected to serious criticism cracks me up.

I'd like to know who Wilonsky envisioned as the readership of that review. Does he think Observer readers debated between seeing the sixth Herbie film and drinking their way up and down Greeneville Avenue?

When I saw the film, kids adored Herbie for the same reason I loved it as a kid, the same reason my grandkids will love another Herbie remake in 20 years -- a beaten-up Volkswagen comes to life, surprising its hard-luck owner! Hilarity ensues! A lovable mechanic makes him new again! The car squirts oil on a dastardly villain! He wins a race just when you thought he was going to lose!

Expecting Disney to deviate from this formula is like going to Hamlet and hoping for a happy ending.

I wrote briefly for the Observer in the late '80s, though I don't think I met Wilonsky. I'm concerned for him. No one on the far side of 35 should be able to offer an informed opinion on the relative quality of Lindsey Lohan's three Disney films.

Television · Movies · 2005/07/15 · 3 COMMENTS · Link

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