One begins to wonder a couple of things about Palin's new-found literary abilities: who is actually ghost-writing all this stuff for her, and is she doing this in order to build up some intellectual cred to offset all the negative press her cluelessness generated during the campaign.

There's a big problem with this, though: will human beings be able to stand the cognitive dissonance of reading what she "wrote," and then listening to her answer questions. (Not to mention what would happen should the ghost-writer step out of the shadows.

Palin politics is just as bizarre as Kremlinology used to be.

Andrew, I certainly wouldn't put it past Microsoft to do whatever they can to either destroy or acquire a competitor. However, in this case, it smells like a simple fuck-up, rather than some clever scheme. A more typical Microsoft move would be to buy Brocade or Extreme or some other networking company, and push their own, "superior" version onto the industry. Sometimes this works--Netscape is dead, for example--and sometimes it doesn't--how are the Zune sales doing these days.

Nope; this reeks of ineptitude, not cleverness.

Gabriel: Another couple of pieces of reality:

• The "missile shield" doesn't work, has never worked, and lots and lots of scientists say it never will work
• The CIA exists to protect us, not the other way around

And let us not forget: between Cheney, Kristol, and Goldfarb, there hasn't been such an unbroken record of incorrect foreign policy predictions since the beginning of Vietnam and "the best and the brightest." Let's hope we actually learned from history for a change.

I don't know about most people, but I'd much rather find myself cuddled up next to, I dunno, Elizabeth Perkins on "Weed" than Courtney Cox on "Cougar Town."

Not that either one is going to be happening. But still, you get the point.

And there I was, just whiling away my idle hours at my job, not paying the slightest bit of attention. What a dimwit I am!

At the risk of self-aggrandizement, I beat you to the Sid and Marty Kroft comparison by nearly two weeks (http://open.salon.com/blog/douglas_moran/2009/10/02/thought_for_the_day_where_the_wild_things_are). And not even an h/t in acknowledgment! Woe is me!

Is it just me, or is Microsoft like the Star Trek franchise in movies: it's only every other one that's any good. Windows 98: good; Windows ME: lame; Windows XP: good; Windows Vista: lame; etc.

One wonders, though, why continue to buy Windows when they keep changing behavior to bring it more and more in line with MacOS. It would seem that eventually the public is going to bail on them. But you never know, I guess.

Andrew, if you're a juvenile twit, we're twits together: http://open.salon.com/blog/mad_typist/2009/10/20/meet_the_nook_the_new_e-book_hotness_of_the_week (in the comments section). It's a bad name. Not "Syfy" bad, but still pretty bad.

Now if only Chabon's books were available in electronic format (Barnes and Nobel, eReader, Kindle; frankly, I don't care which).

Vietnam. Mountains instead of jungle, but Vietnam. Why can't the Big Brains in charge see that. It's beyond frustrating.

If only people like Noonan, Brooks, and Schmidt had expressed their opinions either (preferably) prior to her selection as running mate, or (at least) prior to the 2008 election, maybe it would have made a difference. Now, by their silence, they are just as culpable in foisting Palin off on the country at large as people like Bill Kristol.

I know that many progressives feel that Palin is good insomuch as she divides the Republican party. The problem with that theory is, no matter how remote, there is a chance she can get elected. (We elected Nixon twice; we elected W. twice.) And then where would we be?

For the number one reason why I am suspicious of memoirs, look no further than Vivian Gornick's self-serving defense of her own "Fierce Attachments" that appeared right here in Salon: http://dir.salon.com/books/feature/archives/2003/08/01/gornick/index.html.

With writers like Frey and Gornick peddling their books of fiction as memoirs--which implies a degree of truth that may simply not be there--is there any wonder at the dislike of the category of literature? Seems pretty straightforward from where I'm sitting.

The eBook copy available from Barnes and Noble for reading on the new Nook or with the B&N eReader software on other platforms (such as an iPhone, PC, Mac, or what have you) is only a sawbuck ($9.99). So if one feels the need to torture oneself, save some money and get the electronic version.

Not me, though. I don't need to wade in trash to recognize it's trash--the smell alone is usually enough.

I always thought the outrage over Lambert's actions was overblown. Every AYSA player in history has endured stuff like that. Well, maybe not the ponytail pull, but certainly all the other stuff. Any non-contact sport has similar crap at every level. How much is pro basketball *actually* "non-contact"?

And the first incident on the tape? Lambert got elbowed in the chest, and punched back. But who gets the grief? Lambert.

Wow; Acorn, unions, and "Obamacare" all in the very first sentence! I'm surprised Hoffman's statement didn't include a few other right-wing bogie-man tropes like immigrant bashing, Birther nonsense, death panels, or that hoary old favorite "welfare queens."

These guys have gone completely around the bend. The thing that worries me is, what happens when enough of them get elected?