Good morning.

In no particular order:

• Dave, on Scalia, on the death penalty. Notice Scalia's words: "...the good to be derived from capital punishment — in deterrence, and perhaps most of all in the meting out of condign justice for horrible crimes — outweighs the risk of error." Notice the frame of reference - the "good" from capital punishment is perhaps more a result of simple retribution ("condign justice" according to his flowery misnomer) - than from deterrence. Its appeal to our emotional need for retribution is more important than a result that objectively improves society and protects life. Of course this result is purely illusory with relation to the death penalty - since it is a poor deterrent. Maybe that's why flowery references to our emotional impulses get the bigger role in Scalia's mind.
  
• Got a call from a friend in Oregon - he had just seen and been very impressed by a documentary about this. Wanted to know if I was familiar with it. I told him that I remembered reading about it in the paper, but that I've never been to the place the locals call "Whutwull". It's neat that this is still reaching people.
  
• Saturday, I listened to the audio of the Pulse Concert on my e-bay special VCD from Singapore. Maybe the 20th time listening or watching. This was the first time I noticed that, at the end of the first disc, in an instrumental number the name of which I can never think of, the long-haired guitarist who isn't Gilmour slips in a line from the Dr. Who theme song. Ha.
  
• Hold 'em for Jesus. Ha.
  
• Been experiencing site problems. Very befuddling - looks like a name server had the URL mixed up, but even wierder than that in some ways. I won't go into details. Anyway, that's one small part of my absence yesterday.
  
• Conversion to Wordpress is sidetracked by too many other projects, but we will get there.