The power of e-mail. Six degrees of separation revised for the connected world. Update: 115,000 responses from all seven continents to date. The teacher regrets that he didn’t put a stop date on the original request.

<img src=”http://www.georgybush.com/dark.gif”
align=center alt=”Dark. Like America’s Future.” border=0 height=30 width=500>

“Minor Literary Celebrities Against Fascism”, a call-to-arms from Neal Pollack, whom I still maintain may not exist.

As an adoptive parent, I find this particularly outrageous. Washington Post [via Rebecca’s Pocket]

This will definitely be on our travel agenda. Spy Museum Shows Off Espionage Tools The museum is slated to open in Washington in February of next year. Thanks to Rebecca Blood for pointing to this item; she comments on how much fun it would be to work for a company whose business is setting up museums, and I agree.

A bland antidote for Bill ‘n’ Al fatigue: George W.. Camille Paglia’s postgame analysis on the election and the current status of the Democratic and Republican parties; on the Linda Chavez flap; and the bankruptcy of current literary criticism. In passing, she declares her crankiness at the “low level of play” in last weekend’s NFL championship games. But everyday concerns pale in the face of her recent trip to immerse herself in Mesoamerican ruins in Mexico, she reports. Salon

Jews in Bush’s Cabinet? Don’t Hold Your Breath.

“George Bush has put every kind of American in his cabinet
except Jews, and no one has complained about this, even
though everyone knows it’s nuts. Remaking the American
power structure without Jews is like remaking sports without
blacks. At least when it comes to blacks in sports, you can talk
about it; you can say that blacks changed sports. But no one is
allowed to speak up about something we all quietly know: Jews
changed America.”

What follows in this essay by a Jewish writer is a discussion about whether Jewish paranoia is justified, e.g. in discerning anti-Semitic indicators in Dubya’s actions.

“So long as Jews continue to see themselves as powerless, they fail to recognize the
effect they have had on society and, worse, fail to move outside a privileged
position of wounded self-regard and come to terms with their real spot: big winners
in the new order. It looks like the next chapter in the democratic discourse is going
to be about winners and losers in the globalist pursuit of excellence. Liberal Jews
owe it to themselves and to American ideals to take an honest part in that
conversation. Doing so might begin with asking the President-elect bluntly what’s in
his heart.” New York Observer [via Robot Wisdom]