Wombat Rampant

Steven Leavitt certainly thinks so. The noted author of Freakonomics applies what Glenn Reynolds referes to as "a brutal fisking" to Peter Maas' article in the New York Times that seems to have set off some of the people on my f-list. Leavitt's take on it is that not only is Maas an economic illiterate, he can't write and doesn't know jack about history either. RTWT.

As a consolation prize to my friends who will be disconsolate about not getting to live in a post-apocalyptic future, I offer the thought that Rush Limbaugh and other talk radio hosts may be losing their audiences. No, wait, sorry - it's just that people are turning to podcasts, or tuning in to local hosts. Interest in Al Franken's show does seem to be increasing, though he has a way to go before he's competitive with El Rushbo.

UPDATE Mitch Berg of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, a longtime radio pro, has some comments and context that the Strib article doesn't supply.

Speaking of the apocalypse, Professor Death comments on a couple of news articles concerning public and private teps being taken to prep for the possible avian-flu pandemic.

Gacked from 433, another music meme.
Here's how it works:

Go to http://www.musicoutfitters.com/

In the search box in the upper right hand corner, enter the year you graduated from high school.
The first item returned should be the top 100 songs from that year. Cut and paste them into your journal.

Bold the ones you like.
Underline your favorite.
Italicize the songs you loathe. (Changed from the original since I don't want to type the strike tags 80+ times.)
Results after the cut.
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Thanks, stop by again sometime!

That was one very strange movie, and after watching it I'm surprised it hasn't gotten more attention. I'd been hearing people talk about it for a while, but never actually had a chance to see it, and then Sunday night during the Diversicon dead dog party it was picked by the remaining fans as the thing to see after the fourth season Farscape episodes that had been playing.

In the beginning, Donnie Darko seems to be just another teenage angst movie: the hero is the son of comfortably middle-class parents, but he's seeing a shrink due to some unspecified emotional problem. It turns out Donnie has an imaginary friend, a fiendish-looking six-foot-tall bunny rabbit who calls himself Frank, and one night in October 1988 Frank calls Donnie out of his house and down to the golf course to warn him that the world is going to end in 28 days. That's where things begin to come off the rails, because when Donnie is roused by some early-morning golfers, he comes home to find his bedroom completely demolished by a jet engine...and over time begins to realize what Frank's warning means, and what he needs to do to prevent the apocalypse. It's a strange, strange movie, but it has its moments of hilarity and sweetness in among the dire calamity. Highly recommended.