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Orange County Weekly does its best: So that’s right dude, meet me at the bleachers No principals, no student-teachers Both of us want to be the winner, but there can only be one So I’m gonna fight, gonna give it my all We learn that it was a “dude” who gossiped about Gwen. She challenges him to a fight at the bleachers. If he imagines it will be a fair, one-on-one fight, he is sadly mistaken. Gwen and her aforementioned “pack” will pounce on him like rabid wolves. ...

London was hit with four more bombs today, but the small explosions just appear to have been detonators. As a result, the the casualty figures so far include one person injured, with no deaths. Speculation is that this was a copycat bombing, run by a more group that didn’t know how to design the bombs. One of the bombs, and least, appears to have been a nail bomb, so it is likely they were intended to cause more death and destruction. ...

The San Francisco Police Department has an aspiring novelist writing its community police blotter. Good reading: He had not run for very long before he realized the two cops were only pacing him. They could see something he could not. With each frantic step a sense of dread nagged at him. The more calm and calculating they were, the further behind he left his common sense, and his panic ratcheted up. As he ran, the black and white radio car glided silently along behind like a predatory whale. ...

Bowler hats, multi-layered full skirts…must be Bolivian women’s professional wrestling! Courtesy of The New York Times (free registration required), via Gawker

The man who kept the Enterprise running passed away today. James Doohan’s Star Trek character was a great example for me of Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy may have been the center of most of the action, but Scotty stepped up and took command of the ship in the worst situations when they were away. It made it seem like the supporting characters weren’t just there for support. They were all highly competent, professional, and cool in a crisis, even if not as flashy as the Captain. It evoked a Starfleet system of selecting the best people, out of thousands of volunteers, based purely on merit and team cohesion. (Of course, that doesn’t explain why so many of the people they met from the Federation and Starfleet were venal, cruel, and incompetent.) ...

For anyone who hasn’t heard already, the background for this story is that someone allegedly created a mod called “Hot Coffee” that adds a sexual mini-game to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. As a result, Rockstar Games, which was suspected at one point of hiding the mini-game in GTA, has been embroiled in controversy over whether the ratings system for games works. The latest to weigh in is Sen. Hillary Clinton. ...

Kerst ter Weele is running for Culpeper County, Va., treasurer. Shared an office with him for two years at Virginia Tech. He’s good people. :)

The Guardian is running a blog updated throughout the day with more information. It is important however that those engaged in terrorism realise that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world. Whatever they do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilised nations throughout the world. - Prime Minister Tony Blair ...

Wow, didn’t see that one coming. It makes sense, since there are likely to be several retirements over the next few years, but with Chief Justice William Rehnquist ailing, I think everyone thought he would be the next to retire. O’Connor’s confirmation is one of those moments that sticks in my head from when I first started paying real attention to politics. I remember the Iran Hostage Crisis, the invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. holding out of the Moscow Olympics, Carter losing to Reagan, and O’Connor’s appointment as one big lump of events that ushered me into paying more attention to the wider world. It’s kind of sad she’s retiring. ...

Police Officer: Thanks for helping us catch those copyright violators, Thor. We couldn’t have done it without you. Thor: My existence negates all your Judeo-Christian beliefs. Every one. The Apropos Comics archive, featuring Captain American Government, The Bat-Botanist, and The Amazing Amazon.com. :) Link courtesy of Metafilter