Georgy Russell (Signifying Nothing’s preferred candidate for governor of California) asks today:

I continue to be misquoted, and to have my quotes taken out of context. What’s up with that?!

Amazingly enough, there is no record of Russell having been interviewed by Maureen Dowd.

In all seriousness, when I ran for Congress three years ago, one report described my beliefs as being pro-prostitution (despite nary a mention of prostitution by me). I guess that’s what I get for having a platform plank calling for the legalization of all forms of consensual sex among adults.

Meanwhile, James (whose site I use as a substitute for blogging about things myself, since he has a comparative advantage in such matters) has a post with info on a number of the non-famous candidates for governor.

Last Tuesday morning, high winds knocked out power to over 200,000 customers of Memphis Light, Gas, and Water. As of 10 a.m. today—a week after the storm—around a third of those customers still have no power.

It amazes me that nobody is talking about this in the blogosphere, or in the wider media, for a number of reasons. For one thing, it puts events in Iraq in perspective: if a few minutes of wind can knock out power for an entire county in the industrialized world, with it taking weeks to restore power to some customers, should we be surprised that it’s taking longer to get things sorted out in Iraq?

For another thing, when this happens due to hurricanes, ice storms, or tornados, crews come from utilities that are hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles away to help. But not in Memphis for this situation. Where’s the help from Little Rock and Nashville, St. Louis and New Orleans? Seven people have died already, and more will probably die due to heat exhaustion (daytime temperatures uniformly exceed 90 degrees Farenheit, with very high humidity) and combustion-related accidents (carbon monoxide poisoning, fires, etc.).

Glenn Reynolds reports on his test drive of the Mazda RX-8 sports car. When we were in England, Dad bought an RX-7 (1981 model, I think), which would have been shipped back to the U.S. to be my first car if the entire undercarriage hadn’t rusted out. That was a fun car to ride around in.