Sausages Frozen Solid

Early miscellany from the Ice Capades Practice Rink (that is, the local roads on the Silicon Prairie). W could even count to the temperature (Fahrenheit, since he has no concept of Celsius, let alone Kelvins... or damned near anything else scientific) without taking his shoes off!

• It's the 20th anniversary of Lockerbie; neither WaPo nor NYT even note it on their front pages. Grumblegrumblegrumble. Selective memories, anyone?
• It's not been a good holiday season so far for semicelebrity deaths. We lost Deep Throat — no, this isn't suddenly a porn blawg, I'm referring to the "real" one — and WaPo's eulogy for W. Mark Felt is worth reading and pondering in the context of potential war crimes issues in the current White House (and why aren't the bar authorities paying any attention?). On the slightly more surreal front, Lance may have survived combat waterskiing (hey, what's Morpheus doing dancing on the boat?) that trip up the Nhung River... but his portrayer expired. And the only actor who appeared in every iteration of Star Trek (at least, those released so far) also died.
• On a much cheerier, note, though, Merry Kitzmas (a day late)! Which leads into this critically important explanation of "constitutional principles" by my friend Larry Solum.
• From the Department of Cognitive Dissonance, compare this bit of musing on editors and publishing power with this not altogether misguided rant on genre and literature. Why "not altogether misguided"? Because it — like the article to which it is reacting — persists in the postmodern-French-literary-theory misuse of the word "genre" to refer to "marketing category." There are only four genres... and all prose fiction is in one of them. All prose fiction. So stop misusing the term and being irredeemably French if you want your argument to make sense...