"They had on the most beautiful long, black leather trenchcoats. I thought... 'If I have to learn to write songs to get one of those, I will.'"

When Mick Jagger first saw the Beatles. Oh, you've done things too, motivated by beautiful clothes.

Come commiserate.

Surely, I'm not alone spending the Saturday slogging through taxes. It's much, much easier with TurboTax, but still...

Great podcast about old commercials...

... full of cool, podcasty digressions. From Retrocrush. I'm LOL, literally, really. (And it's inspiring me to podcast again. You can lose track of what podcasting is supposed to be. This is a perfect example.)

"She is definitely savvier, more cautious, and probably more cynical, than she was then..."

The NYT has a big front-page article on Hillary Clinton and the women who were her Class of 1969 at Wellesley College. Excerpt:

Eleanor Dean Acheson, the general counsel who was in the Clinton administration’s Justice Department, said Mrs. Clinton was only now emerging from her husband’s shadow.

“What people now perceive as Hillary’s distance, the criticism that she’s cold and calculating, and does nothing without a focus group, finds its root in that she has had to be, for 25 years, in the spotlight, and in the shadow of Bill,” Ms. Acheson said. “I think she’s going to get more relaxed as this campaign goes, and show more of the personal qualities her friends have always seen.”

Some of the classmates believe Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign seared his wife, especially the attacks on her statements about not being “some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette” or not having “stayed home and baked cookies.”

“When she saw that something as seemingly innocuous as that cookie statement set off such a firestorm, it took me by surprise and it must have taken her by surprise, too,” said Cheryl L. Walker, a literature professor at Scripps College. “I think her strong commitments are the same, but she is definitely savvier, more cautious, and probably more cynical, than she was then...”

There are 5 audio clips of interviews with Hillary's classmates here.

The man whose left pre-frontal cortex -- the center for positive emotion -- soared off the charts.

It's Matthieu Ricard:

A little smile plays at the edges of his mouth, his eyes look into the middle distance, serene, detached....

We confuse happiness with pleasurable experiences, with sensations, elation, the new car, the winning goal, he says. But the good news is that happiness can be learned. "You just need a little change in your mind. Change your mind, change your brain, change your life. Anyone can be the happiest person in the world. It just takes a little wisdom, a little perseverance and looking for happiness in the right place."

Here's his book: Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill.

Turn the clock back 40 years and 20-year-old Ricard was tipped as one of the most promising biologists of his generation, beginning a PhD under Nobel prizewinner Francis Jacob at the Institut Pasteur. His mother, Yahne Le Toumelin, was an artist, a friend of André Breton and Leonora Carrington, his father Jean-François Revel a leading philosopher. When he was 16, he had lunch with Stravinsky. With a career, an apartment, friends, skiing holidays, was he happy?

"Not especially. I didn't undergo intense heart-breaking suffering other than the usual of teenagers, disappointments, relationships. But I was a regular Parisian teenager who didn't know what to do or where to go in life. I knew what I didn't want - I didn't want a boring life - but I didn't know what I wanted at all."

He became a Buddhist monk:

He exchanged the life of a scientist in Paris for that of a hermit in the mountains, eating a simple diet of vegetables, spending months at a time in solitary contemplation....

"I remember a year ago I was sitting in my hermitage, I thought: 'OK, if I could make three wishes, what would I have?' Then I started laughing because what would I want? A big stereo - what would I do with it? A big car? I have minimal things, the tools I need for writing, and photography (he has published five books of photographs) but there's nothing I really need or want. I have two pairs of shoes. I only use one. If you know how to be content, it's like holding a treasure in the palm of your hand."

He realized what he wanted was: more free time.

"Free time" -- an interesting concept. You always do something with your time. You would have more free time if you saw yourself as free when you are doing whatever it is that you do. The question is, how did you get into the predicament of doing so many things that when you do them you do not feel free?

"Male authors outnumber female writers by a staggering 66 to 27..."

... on a list of the top 100 books, based on a survey of 5,000 employees of Waterstone's bookstore who were asked to name their favorite books written since 1982. (Waterstone's, Britain's largest bookstore chain, opened that year.)

Is this disparity in the sex of the authors really something that should stagger us? Do you demand an explanation? What do you think of this one?

Jon Howells, a spokesman for Waterstone's, ... said: "Women read more than men - the core customer is a woman aged between 35 and 55 - but what they read is right across the board: chick lit, crime fiction, biographies, heavyweight novels, and they don't care about the gender of the author.

"Subconsciously, I think men stick to male writers. They think that what women write doesn't appeal to them."

Yeah, blame men! You sure don't want to just give men credit for writing better books! It's got to be men's fault somehow that the list came out this way. Start with that premise, then work out an answer. You know what you've got to do to get along in this world. Whatever the results show, it means that women are superior. Your job is to say why.

What the basketball team wore and what the lacrosse team wore.

Robin Givhan writes about what the Rutgers basketball team wore to receive their apology from Don Imus: matching red and black warm-ups. What did it mean to dress like this?

The young women had been insulted as a team and they would respond as such. No player, not even the white members of the team, or Rutgers Coach C. Vivian Stringer, tried to delineate herself as an individual -- to perhaps separate herself from Imus's disparaging remarks that reached a nadir when he declared the team members "nappy-headed ho's."

What Givhan doesn't quite say is that if they had dressed individually, people would have talked about their choices. Think of all the potential problems. A lot of current fashions are criticized as looking like something a prostitute would wear. But if they were to plan carefully and avoid the kind of clothes that could be characterized that way, it would be hard to avoid things that would be talked about as unfeminine. The sexist remarks made by Imus and company had portrayed the women as both too sexual and not feminine enough. How can you dress to be seen on camera by millions of people and not feel that you will seem to exemplify the remarks you want negated? You'd have to bring in brilliant stylists and buy new clothes all around. And then people would talk about that.

A few of the young women wore earrings. Others had on a bit of lip gloss. And while they wore their hair in a variety of styles from buns to bobs, none of it appeared to be nappy. (And if it was, so what? Nappy should not be mistaken for unkempt. )

Yes, this needs to be said! The effort to condemn Imus has created an unfortunate inference. Take a moment to visualize black women with beautiful naturally curly hair. It's not something to deny.

Givhan goes on to discuss the way the warm-up suits made the women look "like kids." The baggy clothes, she writes, hid "their athletic physiques" and made them look vulnerable. Interesting. In a way, the whole controversy has eclipsed their strength. We've been hearing about how hurt they are by the old man's stupid babbling. There was another path that could have been taken, the one where you ignore the old clod and treat him as an archaic irrelevancy. But somebody -- were these women the ones who called the shots? -- decided to play it as an attack on Imus, and that demanded that they present themselves as more fragile than strong.

They appeared smaller than one might expect of such successful athletes. They looked like kids, and they seemed vulnerable, like a chain of fold-and-cut paper dolls. They only needed to hold hands to complete the image.

Givhan contrasts the Rutgers team to the Duke lacrosse team, which just happened to step back into the limelight simultaneously, as the criminal charges against them were dropped. For their press conference, they wore jackets and ties:

David Evans's suit was a gray pinstripe and he wore it with a geranium-colored paisley tie. Collin Finnerty was wearing a navy blazer with chinos and a preppy striped tie. Reade Seligmann wore a blue button-down shirt with his suit and tie.

They didn't, of course, dress identically. (Not like these guys.)

Givhan notes that when the rape charges against the lacrosse team members were made, people judged them harshly because they were seen as "white, privileged and entitled." And now, appearing before the press to accept the public acknowledgment of their innocence, they wore the clothes of the "white, privileged and entitled." Evans made a point of talking about his privilege: he had the money to hire lawyers he needed to fight the injustice, and what about those who do not?

Privilege had helped him to claim a victory. He wasn't trying to hide it, pretending as if it didn't exist or apologizing for it. Only making the reasonable observation that everyone should be lucky enough to have it on their side.

Gracious of him to take that route. Yet it must be said: he had legal advice! On his own, he might have wanted to attack people for thinking ill of him out of prejudice against white, privileged guys. It was much better to show concern for the less fortunate. His statement processes the experience exactly the way prospective law students write their personal statements on admissions applications!

But yes, these are young people who deserve our good thoughts. As the WaPo headlines the Givhan piece: "In the Eye of a Storm, Beacons of Composure Rutgers, Duke Students Acquit Themselves Well." My personal stylists and legal counsel advise me that I should take that tack. But, hell, I'm blogging here. Life is more complex than that. Nevertheless, I wish all these young people well. And if they end up in law school -- I bet some of them will -- I hope they come to my school.

Signs of Austin, Texas.

Me, in Brooklyn.

Hey, I'm going to go live in Brooklyn for the next academic year.

Taxes!

Haven't done mine yet. Have you?

I cannot fathom the mind of the turtle.

What's with them standing so close together they're forced to bend their heads up like that? They have enough room to space out and hold their heads at a more natural angle. Yet they're all doing it, even the one in front who must be imagining the back end of a turtle. I cannot fathom the mind of the turtle. Life must be so different there on that log... which is in a little pond on the grounds of the University of Texas... near these waterlilies...

"Oh by the way, the person you've been chatting with for a week is me, Halle Berry."

How celebrities escape from the grueling life that is being a celebrity:

"I was just trying to chat anonymously and just be another person in the chatroom having a conversation," Berry said.

"When I decided to say: 'Oh by the way, the person you've been chatting with for a week is me, Halle Berry,' they thought I was just some kook.

"They were like: 'Right, sure, get out of here.' They didn't really believe me at that point. So chatting hasn't gone that well for me."

I don't get her conclusion. Why would their disbelief -- which is justified -- ruin the experience? If you sought to escape from the restraints of fame, and you got people to talk to you as if you were an ordinary person, why do you feel unfulfilled? You got what you sought. The disbelief was part of that, absolutely the way people would react to an ordinary person. Why are you miffed? Seems like you really wanted the diva treatment after all.

Ah!

The radio station has WiFi now. You'll see if I have the gall to simulblog.

Push the button at the top here to listen live, starting in a couple minutes. You can call in to talk about any current news story.

UPDATE: Now, I'm waiting to go on the WNYC show....

ANOTHER UPDATE: I'm on the radio in NY. Here's the streaming audio for the "Week in Review" WPR show.

YET MORE: Listen to the WNYC show, about how Giuliani is calculating his position on abortion:

"For a few days, it seemed as if Don Imus would somehow pull out of the death spiral."

I liked this media analysis by David Carr, about why the Don Imus affair became the perfect storm:

“All the elements were there,” said James Carville, the political consultant who has appeared on the show and has seen a few stories blow up in his time. “You had some dry brush, gasoline, high winds, no rain and low humidity and before you know it, man, it was a wildfire.”

Carr goes through all the elements, so read the whole thing, but this one seemed especially apt to me:

THE WRONG VICTIMS Speaking of targets, Mr. Imus chose poorly. “Imus has a long history of saying far more negative, divisive things,” said Robert M. Entman, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University. “In this case, he chose a college basketball team. College athletics is sacred in our culture in a way. We tell ourselves that it is a place that we have transcended race. This was an attack on the purity of sport, student athletes who are not paid to perform. In picking on a whole team, he chose the wrong noun to go with the adjectives.”

He also picked on the wrong coach. C. Vivian Stringer protects her posse; her eloquent, aggressive defense of the team — and the obvious class of the players at the podium — made for riveting television with a great deal of emotional content. The Rutgers institutional decision to treat the affair as a teachable moment put Mr. Imus in an even deeper hole.

Carr also notes that YouTube kept things going in a new way, and this led me to go look at the clip. Previously, I'd only read the "nappy headed ho" remark. Now, I was hearing the whole context, which included the sidekick persisting in degrading the black women, and portraying them as unfeminine compared to the white players and using the over-the-top word "jigaboos."

Having seen that clip, I'm now much less sympathetic than I was to Imus before. That was truly disgusting.

I've got to run and do my radio show, as noted below. I'll update and say more later. Let me just add that I don't watch sports and I had no fervor about the basketball championships or I might have had a more heated reaction to the nastiness. When people you already have warm feelings about are insulted, you get angrier faster.

Kos hates the "Blogger Code of Ethics" so much...

... he doesn't even have a little sympathy for Kathy Sierra!

(Sierra, the blogger who received death threats, has been used lately as leverage in arguments for trying -- somehow -- to tame the wild blogosphere. Me, I detest the "Blogger Code of Ethics," but I put what happened to Kathy Sierra in a separate category from the usual verbal nastiness on the web.)

What's the best take on this? 1. Liberal men never were feminists. They just pretend like they are until their own interests conflict. Thanks for serving up the evidence for something I've been saying all along. 2. Those whining, repressive victimologists. How cool to see Kos kick their ass.

Imus fired, ushering in a new era, where racist talk will no longer be tolerated in mainstream entertainment media.

The precedent is set. Let's go on from here. Everyone is on notice. This will not be tolerated. You'll have to figure out new ways to have your fun and shock people. No more racial slurs. Everybody stop now.

Radio alert.

I'm going to do two radio shows tomorrow morning. One is the "Week in Review" show on Wisconsin Public Radio, at 8 Central. We go over the various news stories and take call-ins. It's on the "Ideas Network" stations in Wisconsin, and if you go to the WPR link, you'll see a button to listen on line. You too can call in! You can bring up a news story from the past week and make me talk about it.

At 10 Central, 11 Eastern, I'm going to do The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC, New York Public Radio (93.9FM/820AM). We'll talk about how Rudy Giuliani has been attempting to deal with the abortion issue in the 2008 campaign, something I wrote about in a NYT column -- which you can read here if you have TimesSelect.

And don't forget the very hot new Bloggingheads episode with me and Bob Wright talking about breasts and me and me and breasts and Jesus... etc.

Explain Madonna.

Can someone explain what happened to her face? Has she had all her molars extracted? I'm actually getting scared!

The way things look in Madison, Wisconsin.

I've got to get out in that crazy snow. Before going, I wanted to link to my new Bloggingheads episode but it's not up yet, so I'll just link to the main site and you can check for it in a while. I don't know what the title is going to be, but it could be something like "Breasts! Breasts! Breasts!" or "Is Bob Forcing Althouse to Keep Talking About Breasts?" or "The Thing After Which Althouse Will Never Ever Have to Talk About Breasts Ever Again, We Hope" or "We Don't Care What They Say, We Just Want to Know If She Has a Crazy Freakout Meltdown."

UPDATE: Here is is. The title is "All About Ann." So, fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Wow, the comments over at bhTV are so lame! La la la I can't hear what you're saying about Bill Clinton.

The 100 greatest movie lines.

According to Premiere. Only #51-100 available now. You have to click through them one by one, but there are pictures. Of course, it's a matter of taste. Guess the age of the folks who came up with these dubious gems:

86. "Can I borrow your underpants for ten minutes?"...

67. "Go, get the butter."