Finals are now mercifully over. Unfortunately, I forgot to use my Professorial Powers of Evil to ask my tuned-into-the-Zeitgeist students the question that’s been bothering me for the past two weeks: what’s the deal with Lindsay Lohan? No, really, I mean it. Anyone?

Tucked into the omnibus appropriations bill passed a few weekends ago, there was a little noticed provision designating the oak as America’s national tree.

It would have been the maple, but I understand that one’s already taken.

Maybe it's just me, but I find the logo over at New Donkey a little bit scary.

Couldn't they make the donkey look a little friendlier?

Jeremy Freese points out that receipts from Best Buy have become ridiculously long as of late—though, in Best Buy’s defense, Circuit City still manages somehow to have both longer and wider receipts.

Maybe I’ve become old and cranky, but this is patently ridiculous:

Abit has just unleashed their first “Fatal1ty” motherboard. For those who don’t know, Fatal1ty is the name used by 19-year old Jonathan Wendel, one of the most respected gamers in the world.

Early in his gaming career, Fatal1ty became the number 1 ranked Quake 3 player in the world. This was followed by wins 3 years in a row at CPL competing in Quake 3, Alien vs. Predator 2, and Unreal Tournament 2003. Fatal1ty also won Quakecon 2002 and became the world’s first Doom 3 champion at Quakecon 2004.

Call me back when he starts acting like most responsible 19-year-olds and goes to fricking college—or at least drops the stupid l33t handle.

The best part is the “badass” pose he strikes in the included photo. That’s worth the click-through on its own.

The sociology department at the University of Wisconsin is 22 times bigger than the political science department at Millsaps (or, perhaps more “apples-to-apples,” 11 times bigger than our sociology/anthropology department). I think (not being bored enough to count faculty in the sciences, which both soc/anth and polysci are at Millsaps) it’s bigger than the whole sciences division here. Yowzah.

Both* of us polysci types, incidentally, got our Ph.D.s in “red” states (and at SEC schools, to boot), for those of you playing along at home.

About two weeks ago, a cedar bench on which an eighteen-year-old cadet at Brooks Air Force Base carved “Johnny loves Vivian” in 1951 was discovered on the San Antonio River Walk, in front of the La Mansion hotel.

“Vivian” was the seventeen-year-old Vivian Liberto, a student at Saint Mary’s Catholic School. The Air Force cadet was Johnny Cash. Vivian later became Cash’s first wife, for whom he wrote I Walk the Line.

Tonight I’m going to a Halloween party as the great Stupid White Man himself, complete with blazer, badly home-made “no-GM” T-shirt, a “Proud to be a Democrat” baseball cap I picked up for $5 at Wal-Mart last night, and a vague attempt at simulating Moore’s permanent bad facial hair day, based on two days’ growth of beard and lots of little hair clippings from my electric razor.

The National Weather Service has a point forecast service that works for any location in the United States. It’s quite slick, and the best part: there are no ads.

I had to reinstall Windows XP on my laptop this morning after nothing else would work. And I still haven’t reinstalled GRUB on the boot sector yet, so it’s “all XP, all the time” until I bother to fix that. Grr…

For Brad DeLong (who frankly should know better) and the other dipshits operating ShrillBlog: disagreeing with George W. Bush does not make one “shrill.” Going five years without criticizing someone in one’s own party, however, might well do so.

Eric Muller is speechless. I think it could be worse: “One Nation Not Under The U.N.”

Incidentally, photoshops welcome...

Much virtual ink has been spilled over the recent release of The Motorcycle Diaries, a motion picture biography of the young Che Guevara. (See Mark Kleiman for an exhaustive blogography.)

I have nothing substantive to add to the discussion, but I will take this opportunity to quote David Bowie in a blog-post title, and to relate an anecdote from my college days.

Back in college, I and several friends had ourselves listed in the Memphis phone directory with joke names. I was listed as “Opus, P.”; my friend Neil was listed as “Stranger, T. Phantom”; my friend Steve was listed as “Zeppelin, Led”; and my roommate Alex was listed as “Guevara, Che.” I suppose my joke name and Neil’s were too obscure to garner any recognition from the general public, but Steve did receive several late-night phone calls from drunk, outraged rednecks, and Alex did receive quite a bit of Spanish-language junk mail addressed to “Che Guevara.”

UPDATE: Reid at Moteworthy wonders whether Steve was the "Zeppelin, Led" he used to crank call back in high school. It's the right time frame (early 90s), but wrong city. Unless Reid was making long-distance crank calls to Memphis.

James Joyner is amused that the DoD is testing the use of blimps for surveillance in Washington, something he believes was pioneered by the Goodyear Corporation several decades ago. I just wonder how much the toilet seats onboard cost.

The only woman on Sex and the City I found even vaguely attractive turns out to be a lesbian. I guess I should just keep telling myself the attraction was due to her being the only redhead. (þ Electric Venom)

Update: Several correspondents have pointed out that they considered Kristin Davis (“the brunette”) attractive as well. I suppose she was above the Mendoza line.

Here’s a shocker: Britney Spears got hitched again. Good thing she’s started early, as it’s now virtually certain she can now eclipse Liz Taylor’s serial matrimony record—by the age of 30.

Steven Jens is perplexed but fixated by some John Kerry campaign-trail humor. I’m reminded of Lewis Black’s riff on “The White Album” about things overheard at IHOP, all of which revolves around the following statement:

If it weren’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college.

Be careful with that one; if you aren’t, your brain will do what happened to all those computers that Kirk was required to outwit between gratuitous fight scenes on the original series of Star Trek.

My wife recently bought an old Alphasmart Pro on eBay to use as a portable fiction writing tool. (It's much more durable than a laptop.)

Apparently this one belonged to a kid in junior high school, since it stored a dreadful “five paragraph essay” on the benefits of learning to swim, as well as this rap song:

Jumpin, Jumpin
Thou shall get your party on

Chorus
Ladies leave your man at home
The club is full of ballers and there pockets full grown
And all you fellas leave your girl with her friends
Cuz this 11:30 and the club is jumpin jumpin

Though he say for he got a girl
Yeah its true your got a man
But the party ain’t gon stop
So let’s make it hot, hot

Last weekend you stayed at home alone and lonely
Couldn’t find your man he was chillin with his homies.
This weekend your going out
If he try to stop you your going out.
And your new outfit and your Fendi shoes.
You and your crew parlayin at the hottest spot tonite.

Your gonna find the fellas rollin in the Lexus.

“Thou shall get your party on.” That must have been on the tablet that Moses dropped.

Since Chip Taylor is doing it, I’ll do it too. Here’s where I work:

My building is the greenish-grey one that looks like an upside-down M.

Amazon.com debuts the Paris Hilton jewelry collection.

Apropos of Hurricane Frances: Why don’t we try to destroy tropical cyclones by nuking them?

Environmental and physical problems aside, I think Florida and Florida State fans could also get behind this plan.

Well, I managed to survive eight quasi-interviews with representatives of various institutions, not to mention a long, but most enjoyable, night last night at The Green Mill jazz club. Now I’m taking a bit of a break in my hotel room, listening to the Ole Miss-Memphis game on the Internet and pondering some late dinner plans.

You can tell your perceptual screens are kicking in at full throttle if you’re tempted to go out and verify that Kahneman and Tversky actually wrote what Mark Kleiman says they wrote.

Alas, my PDF of the original article (cited in my dissertation, no less) is not in front of me…

I sometimes wonder what our students would think of us if they knew what their professors did at parties.

Then again, it would probably just reinforce their stereotype of us as nerds who sit around and talk a lot, even considering the presence of a margarita machine (which, alas, I did not partake of, since I drove to the party) and various incredibly obscene discussions.

I have five Gmail invites up for grabs, and I can’t think of anyone offhand who’d want one (that probably doesn’t have one already). Drop me an email (lordsutch@gmail.com) if you want one.