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Frank Gorshin, who gave me the creeps as a kid when playing The Riddler on the 1960’s TV version of Batman, passed away on Tuesday. What I primarily remember about that show wasn’t the exaggerated wooden acting of Adam West…it was the sheer enthusiasm of the people playing the villains. They really made the show, and and I loved episodes with Gorshin playing the Riddler and Cesar Romero playing The Joker. (Hey, let’s play on a child’s natural fear of crazy, malicious people…and clowns!) ...

Very cool. You can zoom into various sections and look for different cities, or at least the communities that made up those cities. (For Greensboro, look for New Garden Meeting House. For Winston-Salem, look for Salem and Wachovia just to the west. I grew up near Upper Saura Town, just to the north of Wachovia, and I had no idea there was a mountain called Ararat nearby.) Link courtesy of Tar Heel Blogwatch ...

Darth Vader on Contractors: Due to the haste with which we are proceding through the latter phases of this battle-station’s construction we have been forced to employ scores of civilian contractors from across the galaxy in addition to our own Imperial Corps of Engineers. This had led to a certain clash of working cultures. For instance, this morning I critiqued a tragically sub-par piece of workmanship on a tractor-beam repulsolift inversion assembly by snapping the neck of the site supervisor and throwing his limp corpse down a disused elevator shaft. ...

Yep, this may be our next Ambassador to the United Nations. If the lack of preparation or basic interest in diplomacy indicated in this article is true, then why is John Bolton even still employed, much less getting promoted? Link courtesy of Obsidian Wings Update: That darned Democrat Voinovich on Bolton. ;)

I like that cat color. Daring, but it goes well with neutral-toned furniture. :)

The loose, global nature of al-Qaeda’s operations offer some advantages, but there are bound to be limitations: AP: Ethnic Rifts Tearing at al-Qaida It would be interesting to know what happens between the Arab, Central Asian, and Southeast Asian groups when resources grow more scarce.

WordPress 1.5.1 is out, and given that it included a security fix, it seemed like a good idea to go ahead and upgrade. The upgrade went pretty easily, as near as I can tell. You really can just overwrite the old files, assuming you don’t do like me and drop them into the wrong directory. The only problem I had was with a stats plugin I was using on the admin side and the fact that I really should have deactivated/reactivated the plugins during the process. ...

Lorrie clued me into this one. Who Reads What? is a collection of relatively famous people talking about the books they like, going back to 1988. Interesting and eclectic group, currently ranging alphabetically from Bella Abzug to Barry Zito.

I figured this would be happening sooner or later, but I always thought it would just be more blatant. We’re soon to have uniform standards on driver’s licenses thanks to the REAL ID Act, creating a national ID card out of identification that once was more fractious. The legislation was just passed by the House of Representatives, thanks to it being attached to a “must-pass” Iraq appropriations bill. Anyone remember Reagan being opposed to a national ID card? That was in part due to a libertarian strain in conservative politics, and in part due to evangelicals who believed a national ID card was the first step toward world government. Sure, maybe 9/11 changed “everything,” but I would think fundamental political and religious beliefs would be the last things to change, so expect some fireworks over this one by tomorrow, when it goes to the Senate. ...

I grew up in Baptist churches…and watched them split. We went to a string of churches on four consecutive Sundays where the pastor resigned while we were there. This is pretty typical, and has been so for a long time. The issues may have been politics, divorce, smoking, church funds, the pastor’s wife, pants on women, sports on Sunday, you name it, but what it usually came down to was a control-freak pastor who couldn’t see past his own nose, and it sounds like East Waynesville Baptist got themselves a real winner last October. ...