Blue Crab Boulevard

Richard Oppel, Jr. in the New York Times implies that the deadlock on a prime minister for Iraq may have finally been broken. What's not clear is whether Jawad al-Maliki, the new nominee, will actually be a good choice. The Times reports that he is a Shiite hardliner.

On one hand, if the deadlock is broken, that's good. If Maliki is a religious-based hardliner, that may not be good.

We'll see.

To all the nice folks who have linked to me. I thank you for linking me. (Folks who have blogrolled me have been blogrolled in return and are not included in this list.)

The Anchoress, I'm Glad you liked the title. That is high praise.

Blogmeister

A Blog For All

Rightwinged

The Moderate Voice, Twice, and I thank you for that.

The Maja Blog

As always, if you linked and I missed it, please send me a note and I will add you.

That was my first thought when I read this headline: "Emotional Wiring Different In Men And Women." I mean who hasn't experienced that first hand? But it turns out they have actually found that men and women have completely different neurological connections in a little almond shaped cluster of neurons. The area processes how men and women experience fear and aggression. Men are wired to respond by heightened awareness of areas that process information coming from the outside world, like visual and motor actions. Women instead are wired for heightened awareness of internal processes and regulation of heart rate, etc.

That of course fits in with the theory that men and women evolved with different roles. Men as the hunter/defender and women as the nurturer and child protector.

Or it could be that we really are from different planets. Which would explain a lot more.

Michael Totten's final chapter in his day trip to Iraq is up. It's about cigarettes, borders and taxi drivers. And quite a lot more. Take a look.

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard go out of our way every day to find news that really, really matters. In that spirit, we brought you news on telephone calling and telecommuting.

And now we have the topper. Carpentry.

An Oakland, California carpenter was arrested when the homeowner he was building bookshelves for returned early. It seems the itinerant woodworker was letting it all hang out. He did not have a stitch of clothing on.

He told officers he stripped before crawling under the client's house to do electrical work because he didn't want to soil his clothes, police said.

Honniball said Thursday that working au naturel gave him a better range of motion and that a skilled craftsman can work clothing — and injury — free.

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard suspect Mr. Honniball (we swear we are not making up his name) is not quite telling the truth here. He's been arrested three other times for the exact same offense.

We have never, ever done carpentry in the nude. Honest.

We have grown attached to portions of our anatomy and prefer they stay attached.

A CIA officer has been fired after being caught leaking classified information to the media. The officer admitted he had given information to and held unauthorized discussions with the media.

WTF is with the CIA?

UPDATE: WaPo coverage.

UPDATE: Another take on it.

CBS breathlessly announces they have an exclusive interview with a retired CIA official who denounces the Bush administration. They release lots and lots of juicy tidbits to get a lot of buzz generated.

And, once again, they fail to disclose that the person being interviewed has a new book to sell.

WTF is with the CIA?

It's ice cream news day! Ben and Jerry's is apologizing for introducing a new flavor called "Black and Tan". Now for those of you who think a black and tan is a harmless name for a mixture of Guinness and beer, you are about to gain a factoid. The name Black and Tan originated as a nickname for a para-military police auxiliary recruited by the British during Ireland's war for independence. They were noted for their brutality and many people in Ireland still hate them and what they stood for.

Ben and Jerry's was likely thinking of the drink, not the militia. No word if the ice cream in question is stout/beer flavored. (Side note; a guy I once knew actually made a beer float - he dropped a scoop of ice cream into a beer. He said is was absolutely horrible. I didn't even try it - it looked bad enough!)

And ice cream flavoring happens to be our next subject. A Portuguese shop will begin selling up to 60 flavors of ice cream when it opens. In all sorts of interesting flavors. Like grilled sardine, cod, shrimp and tuna. The owner is the son of a man who holds a place in the Guinness book of World Records for inventing the most flavors of ice cream. (See, these stories are too tied together!) The original store in Venezuela serves over 700 flavors including trout and the ever popular garlic.

I wonder if they have Guinness flavor?

In today's Opinion Journal, Daniel Henninger takes a look at the blogosphere and asks, "Are you people all crazy?" Well, not exactly, but close. He points out that there are some very odd things happening out there in interweb space. The thing he worries about most is disinhibition. (We've mentioned before that the lack of non-verbal cues leads some people to go completely over the top when blogging or commenting).

Example: The Web site currently famous for enabling and aggregating millions of personal blogs is called MySpace.com. If you opened its "blogs" page this week, the first thing you saw was a blogger's video of a guy swilling beer and sticking his middle finger through a car window. Right below that were two blogs by women in their underwear.

In our time, it has generally been thought bad and unhealthy to "repress" inhibitions. Spend a few days inside the new world of personal blogs, however, and one might want to revisit the repression issue.

The human species has spent several hundred thousand years sorting through which emotions and marginal neuroses to keep under control and which to release. Now, with a keyboard, people overnight are "free" to unburden and unhinge themselves continuously and exponentially. One researcher quotes the entry-page of a teenage girl's blog: "You are now entering my world. My pain. My mind. My thoughts. My emotions. Enter with caution and an open mind."

An interesting thought. Are we, in fact, losing our inhibitions and, by extension, some of our civility and and ability to control ourselves? Well, I think the answer is: some people are. Henninger cites some of the rank behavior on some comment threads. There are people who obviously act as if they are out of control. Now whether they would continue that behavior away from the computer is another thing altogether.

At the risk of enabling, does the Internet mean that all the rest of us are being made unwitting participants in the personal and political life of, um, crazy people? As populist psychiatry, maybe this is a good thing; the Web allows large numbers of people to contribute to others' therapy. It takes a village.

But researchers note that the isolation of Web life results in many missed social cues. It is similar to the experience of riding an indoor roller coaster, what is known in that industry as a "dark ride." This dark ride could be a very long one.

Well, I think it may be a bit to soon to predict the end of the world as we know it. (Sorry, I'll bet you could hear R.E.M. just then couldn't you?) But I think Henninger has a valid point here. He may also be struggling to grasp the whole concept of the blogosphere.

 Read the whole thing.

(Hollyweird) APRIL 21 - Legendary director George Lucas today announced the Michael Moore will headline an all-star cast in the next Star Wars installment. Using a working title of "Episode 7: Revenge of the Clueless", the project has already begun filming near area 57. Working in deep cover, our photographer from the Magic 8-Ball Photography and Septic Pumping, Inc. has obtained an exclusive picture of Moore in his new role.