Daniel Munz, who I've always found really excellent and thought-provoking, has got himself a new blog. Go say hi. And while you're there, tell him to make the banner atop the site smaller, it'd be nice to see a post or two when I first land on the page.

In the "that's a trip" category, construction crews are taking sanders to the beautiful Disney Center here in LA. Why?

Beams of sunlight reflected from portions of the hall have roasted the sidewalk to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, enough to make plastic sag, cause serious sunburn to people standing on the street and create a hazard to passing motorists...

"I will just appreciate not having the glare," said condo resident Jacqueline LaGrone, who said that her air-conditioning bill had doubled during summer months since Disney Hall opened and that the glare made it impossible to sit on her patio on hot days.

In a landslide vote, Hitchens (not to be confused with Will Smith's Hitch) has won the Oscar for laziest column writer the Academy has ever seen:

The return of politics to Iraq has had many blissful secondary consequences, one of them apparently minor but nonetheless, I think, important. When was the last time you heard some glib pundit employing the phrase ‘The Arab Street’? I haven’t actually done a Nexis search on this, but my strong impression is that the term has been, without any formal interment, laid to rest.

Because you know what takes for-fucking-ever? Nexis searches.