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JM writes about a friend at a certain university who was assigned to write an essay on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After writing one supporting the Israeli side, her professor refused to grade it and told her to rewrite it – either supporting the Palestinians or writing objectively – in order to receive a grade.

What do you say I give this professor a jingle? As my brother used to say, I FEEL a jacuzzi coming on!

Now they’ve cloned white-tailed deer. Why? We don’t have enough? While I don’t have anything against hunting, I’ve never quite understood the allure of driving three hours north and freezing your rear end off sitting in a tree in the north woods in order to wait for a glimpse of the very same animal that is in your backyard, en masse, every single night. I remember one evening when my Dad and brothers had left to go hunt, and two hours later, I barely managed to avoid running over three deer less than fifty yards from the house with the truck. And no, we did not live in the country.

I have to say, as much as it still boggles my mind that Man has developed cloning technology in my lifetime, I’m a little disappointed with the results. I hope someone is building a secret army of clones somewhere or something, because the reality is really falling far short of all the science fiction I’ve read. Where’s my laser pistol? Where’s my lightsabre? The real globalist conspiracy has to be the most boring conspiracy ever – what lousy excuse for a conspiracy to take over the world has a web site announcing their intentions? A web site, by the way, they don’t bother to update.

And if you’re going to clone something, clone Morgan Fairchild. Can’t have too many of those.

I’m not sure how I feel about cloning. I don’t know enough to have an opinion on it, although from what little I understand, I can’t support either the destruction of conceived but unused people or the use of clones for harvesting or study purposes. My technophilic instincts tend to war against my ethics here, to a certain extent.

According to Len Pasquarelli: It hasn’t yet been officially announced, but the starting quarterbacks for the Pro Bowl will be Steve McNair (of Tennessee) and Daunte Culpepper (Minnesota).

Good onya Daunte! This only goes to show why fans should not be voting for All-Star games – or at least that their votes should not be taken as a serious indicator of a player’s skill. In keeping with this season’s Black Quarterback Watch, here’s yesterday’s results:

Culpepper: 20/29 260 yds 69% 8.97 avg 3 TD 1 INT 117.0 rating

D. McNabb: 17/27 238 yds 63% 8.81 avg 1 TD 2 INT 72.8 rating

The ESPN fans, as I mentioned before, favored McNabb over Culpepper as the starter by 51 percentage points. Ludicrous. Week 16 actually wasn’t a bad game statistically for McNabb. But as usual, the Eagles weren’t in the game because of him, they were in it because of Brian Westbrook’s punt return – although the defense was no help at all. McNabb even made a very nice play in the pocket to avoid what looked like a certain sack, then seemed to overthrow Chad Lewis but the TE managed to go up and get it for a vital 4th-quarter first down on third-and-long. But that last INT that gave the game away was pretty bad. Not exactly the crunch-time performance that is supposed to excuse his “misleadingly” average stats.

Okay, but overrated. That’s my verdict. Still. And yes, I’ll continue hammering this into the ground for the rest of the season. It’s football. This is what we do. If anyone wants a long-winded rant on how Two-Minute Tommy Kramer was a better quarterback when he was drinking, I can deliver that too. My theory is that his balance was off without the beer in one hand.

A spokesman for Mr Berlusconi said the prime minister had been telephoned recently by Col Gaddafi of Libya, who said: “I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid

Not that this will stop Jean-Francois Kerry or numerous other Democratic cretins from insisting that the two events are unrelated. Then again, most Democrats still believe in the tooth fairy, the labor theory of value and wealth through taxation, so I see no reason why they should start being bound by objective reality now.

Couldn’t help but notice that there appear to be some newcomers to the blog today. I hope that you’re enjoying it. There’s a good bit of archives to plow through here if you’re so inclined, a few ill-considered rants and some interesting, if random links here and there. Stop by again sometime.

I try to blog four times a day, but the mileage varies depending on mood, current events and numerous other vagaries. Feel free to let me know what you think.

Random observation of the day – I think my two favorite Christmas carols are Silver Bells and Good King Wencelas, with a slight edge to Silver Bells.

You can see why this gentleman was a little less sanguine about The Return of the King. The Physics Geek says it’s been linked up the wazoo around the blogosphere, but since there may be a few of you new to this brave new world of the all-conquering blog, I figured it was worth posting. It made me laugh, anyhow.

Now, if everyone would just be satisfied with posting links on their blogs instead of sending me “Send This to 10 STRONG WOMEN You Know” or stupid videos of cartoon babies dancing to horrid pop songs, the world would be a better place. Not any less dangerous, perhaps, but indubitably better.

I was most pleased to see an article by Fred Reed being posted on the WND Commentary page today. He’s a great expatriate freedom writer, who regularly puts to shame the perverted modern American notion of what it is to live in a free society. I recommended him to WND’s commentary editor a few months ago; he’s a great writer and if you enjoy my stuff, you’ll love his.

Here’s his archives. They’re well worth going through.

WHAT I DID NOT LIKE

1. Faramir was one of my favorite characters in the books. He is markedly less noble here, although most of the damage was already done in The Two Towers. His heroism, as well as his admiration for his older brother, does not come across well.

2. Denethor was an epic tragic figure in the books. Here, he comes off as petty and vindictive; a crazy man, not a great man crazed by the loss of his beloved son. The handling of the Denethor-Faramir relationship was probably the biggest disappointment to me, aside from Liv Tyler’s unaccountably tepid Arwen. She’s beautiful, but bland, bland, bland.

3. Horses don’t charge for over a mile. They also don’t charge walled positions. Silly. This happened several times.

4. The Great Sleepless Eye as spotlight. Sauron can see across Middle Earth, but not through a rock right in front of it? What was that? Minor, but very weird.

5. The tiny size of the Army of the West, and the way it gets surrounded. Ever heard of a defensive square, gentlemen? Or better yet, a fighting withdrawal using the seven hills of the book? It didn’t make sense and it wasn’t dramatic. Again, minor, but a strangely inept touch. The same sort of thing happened when Eomer’s riders surrounded Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli. If you crowd too much, no one can do anything. What was the point? Yes, they’re surrounded. We get it. Oh, they’re really, really, really surrounded? Come on.

6. Elrond’s reduction in stature. I’d prefer to have seen him remain aloof, even bitter.

7. The siege of Gondor seemed rushed. I thought the siege of Helms Deep came off more powerfully.

8. Aragorn seemed rather lacking in authority when he confronted the dead. He was such a stud taking on the Nazgul and the orcs; I found this a little surprising and disappointing.

THINGS I REALLY, REALLY LIKED

1. The Riders of Rohan were perfect. Theoden’s transformation from deceived victim to triumphant victor was great. His line about being able to enter the Hall of his Fathers without sorrow or shame brought tears to my eyes. I loved Theoden in the books, loved him even more in the movies.

2. I had my doubts about Eowyn. While the actress didn’t quite fit my mental picture of her, she gradually grew on me. In The Return of the King, she comes into her own. I hope we’ll see more of her and Faramir in the extended DVD.

3. The charge of the Rohirrim. Yes, they didn’t fight the Oliphaunts in the books. No, it made little tactical sense considering their superior speed. But holy cats, it was so freaking cool!

4. Legolas rules, again.

5. The devotion to the close relationships of the hobbits. Some may have felt that the ending(s) was too drawn out, but I say no. These four had been through Hell and back, been irreparably changed – even maimed – and a quick Hollywood wave-and-ride-into-the-sunset would have been wrong, wrong, wrong. I never found Frodo terribly interesting in the books, but Elijah Woods did an outstanding job of bringing him to life. By the end, I wanted to weep with Sam.

6. The last fight with Gollum was much better than I imagined it could be.

7. The horrors of war and its effects on the women and children was tremendously powerful in each movie. The grief of the women and children as their men rode out on Faramir’s hopeless charge on Osgiliath was overpowering. Also great was the constant reminders that the men were fighting to protect those they loved. They rode willingly to die, that their loved ones might live.

8. The power of the Nazgul ripping apart the retreating cavalry of Gondor. And then, the aerial assault on the city walls.

9. Grond. It WAS Grond, nightmarish and terrifying.

10. The crotchety old hobbit glaring at the returning heroes, as he did at Gandalf before. There is the unconquerable strength of The Shire. He who refuses to be impressed by the glamour of the great will never lick the boots of a tyrant.

11. Loved the lighting of the watchtowers. Huge tension, plus it demonstrated some of the tactical realities involved. Very cool stuff.

12. The final scene. Sheer perfection. In a hole in the ground….

(My apologies to regular blog readers. There wasn’t room for all of this in today’s column, and I didn’t want to force any newcomers to wade through the last few days of posts.)

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), a presidential aspirant, portrayed the success with Libya as an exception to the Bush Doctrine. “Ironically, this significant advance represents a complete U-turn in the Bush administration’s overall foreign policy,” he said in a statement Saturday. “An administration that scorns multilateralism and boasts about a rigid doctrine of military preemption has almost in spite of itself demonstrated the enormous potential for improving our national security through diplomacy.”

Let’s see. Two American enemies have been beaten down and smacked around. Immediately after this, an old American enemy decides to make nice. Can you spot the connection? Jean-Francois Kerry can’t. Ironically, it is those who believe George Bush is too synaptically-challenged to be President who will consider this a persuasive argument. I am not a Bush fan, but neither do I recommend making the mistake of confusing a glib tongue with intelligence, much less wisdom.

Congratulations to St. John’s and its now-legendary coach, John Gagliardi. Not only did the man collect his 4th NCAA Division III national championship, but he and his team did it in style by knocking off Mount Union, the top-ranked defending champions who were on a 55-game winning streak and had outscored their opponents 249-6 this year.

24 – St John’s

06 – Mount Union

John Gagliardi is one of my heroes. Not because he’s a winner 414 times over, but because of the way he wins. You have to read about him to believe him. In the world of football, he is the ultimate maverick.