Taking A Break

Well, I'm in the process of returning to school. For the next week or so, before shopping period starts but after the majority of students return to campus, we have what is officially called "orientation" but referred to by everybody as "Camp Yale." With the exception of the Instapundit Watch, blogging activities will be on hold while I descend into a world of drinking, drugs, gambling, and anonymous unprotected sex (just like camp, right?).

A few parting thoughts. It seems that the SBVF"T" story is beginning to burn out. The press is getting sick of it (thanks Glenn, you loathsome imbecilic prick). Maybe, in the long run, it's not such a bad thing that it all happened this way. The O'Neill/Corsi slander was going to come out no matter what---and though Kerry and the media should have been quicker to attack it, it peaked as an issue too soon, and forces Bush into the dilemma of having to conduct his convention either as a prolonged and transparent attack ad, or else as the highlight reel of a failed administration.

I'm almost positive that the SBVF"T" would have preferred getting national attention sometime after Labor Day. And now no one is going to pay much attention to the second attack ad, which is a risible distortion of Kerry's Senate testimony, but would be capable of doing damage, since we are, as I said, the United States of Amnesia, and since Kerry himself has managed to do something unthinkable---transform the Vietnam War into a just cause in the minds of Democrats. (Shame on all of them.)

Enough about all that. I'll try not to talk about it when I return to a full blogging schedule. When I do come back, I want to begin by saying a few things about how we can come to conclusions about the truth behind 35 year old slightly shrouded events---the key, I think, is Occam's Razor, and discarding positive or negative absolute statements about empirical facts in favor of assigning probabilities to various logically valid theories. And while I'm talking about philosophy, I'm going to have to get in a few words about Jonah Goldberg's pants-soilingly embarrassing effort to write as a philosopher.

Last word: I just saw some anti-gambling asshole on TV complaining about the pernicious effects of ESPN's broadcasting of the World Series of Poker, and his plans to make an anti-poker video in order to---what else?---save the children.

Fuck the children. See you in a week.