From Bloomberg:

""I'm the master of low expectations,'' [President] Bush told reporters en route to Doha, Qatar, in his first airborne press conference since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "We accomplished what I hoped we'd accomplish. We met expectations.''"

Their expectations? Everyone making it back in one piece. These days that's quite an accomplishment.

 
More evidence that Esther Dyson learns fast:

"As a new blogger, I am learning that the only way to do it is to do it regularly; otherwise you end up pitting back-clog against current events, and you postpone everything to another time… I need to remind myself that a blog is just a list of pointers with annotations."

Link the pointer. Write the annotation. Wax on. Wax off. Not so hard once you've worked the right muscles a while. The aches only come about when you start to get lazy about it. Oy!

 
Roger Ailes (yes, the non-evil one) points out a story in The Guardian covering a reemergence of some of the bad effects from what's known as "chequebook journalism" (yes, with the British spelling and everything). What caught my attention was the last paragraph:

"The News of the World said it was "surprised and perplexed" by the collapse of the case. "We fully stand by the report. The story resulted from a thorough and legitimate investigation undertaken by one of the paper's most senior and experienced reporters, a journalist responsible for more than 100 successful convictions*.""

So, just when did the press become part of the prosecuting team?

* Emphasis imposed by my own hand.

 
For those who pay attention to such things, there's a good article on Salam Pax at Slate. Well, good except for its use of the phrase nom de blog. Ick.

 
It's Sunday and already I have my favorite human-verbal interaction of the week*.

Friend: "What height are you?"

Kaf: "Around 5'9". Why?"

Friend: "That's average, right?"

Kaf: "Yeah, I think it's considered median for males."

Friend: "I wonder which side there are more people on."

Kaf: "What? Side of what?"

Friend: "If there's more people above the median or below it -- in height."

Kaf: "Uh...something tells me they're about the same."