If you're not watching Countdown, you should be. Olbermann's special comment last night is worth watching in its entirety.

Thus was it left for the previous president to say what so many of us have felt; what so many of us have given you a pass for in the months and even the years after the attack:

You did not try.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your predecessor.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your own people.

Then, you blamed your predecessor.

That would be a textbook definition, Mr. Bush, of cowardice.

Olbermann, a television news anchor, alas, of MSNBC, has the courage to go where few public personalities have: to questioning the president's courage. Yes, yes, I know: the right-wing has long bemoaned the lack of "morals" or "ethics" in the Oval Office. But for too long the left, and by proxy, the "reasonable moderates" in America have been silent, preferring to elide "untruth" instead of "lie", to claim the president is merely "mistaken" rather than "dishonest". Olbermann puts the lie to that. Then he spikes the ball in the endzone, in a way that startled even me, running on a machine at the gym last night:

And you have now tried to hide your failures, by blaming your predecessor.

And now you exploit your failure, to rationalize brazen torture which doesn’t work anyway; which only condemns our soldiers to water-boarding; which only humiliates our country further in the world; and which no true American would ever condone, let alone advocate.

And there it is, Mr. Bush:

Are yours the actions of a true American?

Keith is the tonic America needs right now. Without a strong voice of opposition (and no, without the media on board the Democrats cannot get said message out) no real change can occur. This is what Edward R. Murrow understood: that to compromise journalistic ethics in order to not upset viewers was unacceptable. As are our current president's actions.

A great article about The Office:

And if any conjecture could be made about the cultural differences that these subtly contrasting programs reveal, it might be this one: These days, Germans and Americans are doing much of their living in and around their offices, while the Brits and French continue to live outside of them. Here, in broad strokes, are the chief differences. In the British version, nobody is working, nobody has a happy relationship, everyone looks terrible, and everybody is depressed. In the French version, nobody is working but even the idiots look good, and everybody seems possessed of an intriguing private life. In the German version, actual work is visibly being done, most of the staff is coupled up, and the workers never stop eating and drinking—treating the office like a kitchen with desks.

I've only seen the British version. Are the others as he describes?

Any day is automatically good if there are blue skies, high pressure and 70 degree temps. Especially if one is tearing down the GW parkway over 80 with the wind whipping leaves around your convertible.

It doesn't get much better than this. A little voice reminds me that I'm happy, but not content, which is as it should be.

As many know, I have a lifelong hatred for the writing of Gregg Easterbrook. His constant "I am contrarian for the sake of being contrarian" refrain is particularly ill-suited to his comments on science, e.g. his idea that the Bush administration, despite having an appalling record, would create a program for cleaner air, simply because, if properly implemented, it would be better than nothing (as opposed to the current law, which is much stronger than the proposed rule change) was idiotic.

But the best example has to come in this review of his take on string-theory:

The problem is, he's chosen a particularly idiotic way of working religion into his column. I'm sure he just about dislocated a shoulder patting himself on the back for this zinger (he liked it so much, he used it twice, after all), but it works only because he uses the word "dimension" to mean two different things in the same sentence. In the context of string theory, "dimension" has a precise scientific meaning-- roughly, "a direction of motion perpendicular to all other directions of motion." In the context of religion, "dimension" is a metaphor.

Equating the scientific and "spiritual" meanings of dimension, the way Easterbrook does, makes about as much sense as saying "A big drop in stock prices could lead to a bear market, which would be bad because bears ripped apart that guy in Grizzly Man." It lends a wonderful Lemony Snicket quality to the article, but doesn't exactly mark him as a Deep Thinker.

Go read the delong summary if you want more commentary. One cannot approach science the same way one approaches religion, namely, as a group of dogmatic individuals clinging to various theories that are "in vogue" with about as much relevance as how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. If string theory is incorrect, that's fine. But to say a particular scientist would be labeled "a crank" because he had an alternate theory (backed up with the appropriate evidence) misunderstands the nature of scientific disagreements. Which is typical, for Easterbrook.

There be plenty of gold in the treasure chests downtown, boys! The map to the precious booty be easy to navigate!