Denver's bankrupt aquarium (yes we have one, and no I don't know why) has found a buyer:

Landry’s Restaurants, a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange, employs 33,000 workers in 36 states. Its 280 restaurants include including Landry’s Seafood House, Joe’s Crab Shack, The Crab House, Rainforest Café, Charley’s Crab, Willie G’s Seafood & Steak House, The Chart House and Saltgrass Steak House.

They plan to turn it into a "dining and entertainment complex".

I guess this solves the problem of finding fresh seafood in Denver.

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John-Paul's onto something.  He obviously has an eye for overweight porn stars ;)

One of the deepest divides in America today is the gulf of mutual suspicion that separates evangelicals from secular society, and policy battles over abortion and judicial appointments will aggravate these tensions further in coming months. Both sides need to reach out, drop the contempt and display some of the inclusive wisdom of Einstein, who wrote in his memoir: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."   

Nicholas Kristof points out the continuing disconnect between the media/intellectual establishment and the born-again.  Kristof (and myself) disagree with evangelicals on just about everything, and criticizing the consequences of the growing religious influence on the government's policies is good and healthy in a secular democracy.  Ridiculing evangelical's beliefs however is not playing nice and could turn out to be a dangerous underestimation.

...liberal critiques sometimes seem not just filled with outrage at evangelical-backed policies, which is fair, but also to have a sneering tone about conservative Christianity itself. Such mockery of religious faith is inexcusable. And liberals sometimes show more intellectual curiosity about the religion of Afghanistan than that of Alabama, and more interest in reading the Upanishads than in reading the Book of Revelation.

In a world that is increasingly evangelical - hardcore fundamentalist Christianity is one of the fastest growing religions in the world - ignoring, or worse belittling these beliefs will increasingly engender conflict between those who espouse religious tolerance and those they nonetheless dismiss.

Compassionate conservatism was a brilliant slogan that did three things at once. It acknowledged that conservatives had a problem. It insisted that conservatives really did care about the poor. And it tried to change the debate about poverty by claiming that advocates of programs outside government, especially church-based programs, had better ideas about how to help the poor.

By the same logic, it is time to proclaim loudly and without apology that there is such a thing as "patriotic liberalism."

A very interesting column by E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post.  He proposes that rather than react defensively to the derisive charges of appeasement from the right, liberals should aggressively resurrect and redefine the "patriotic liberalism" of FDR and Harry Truman.

The certainty that bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan grew after the Pakistani intelligence services recently intercepted several hand-written letters from the al-Qaeda chief. Pakistani intelligence sources say the contents of these letters have been shared with the CIA. These sources say that bin Laden might have disappeared into Pakistan's northern tribal territory, across the mountain border with Afghanistan, or he might be hiding in the capital Islamabad or 20 miles away in Rawalpindi -right under the nose of the Pakistani armed forces and the government.

Things are looking up over in the real War on Terror.  Recently captured bed-headed terrorist, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, had recent contact with bin Laden.  The noose is tightening.

I also will note for the record that all of this is happening in Pakistan, not Iraq.

"President Bush has postponed his reelection campaign until after a war with Iraq, but White House and Republican Party strategists have begun planning for a contest in which they envision raising as much as $250 million to wage a battle designed to break the political stalemate of the 1990s and make the GOP the country's majority party."

Regardless of what happens in Iraq and the rest of the world, the Democrats better be getting ready.

"Nothing so bold is forthcoming in the Strategy. Which is yet another indicator that the czars of national computer security are perfectly content to tease out the hyperbole in perpetuity. The bigger the perceived threat, the greater their importance inside the Beltway."

I've been neglecting my Info Security category, for no real good reason other than nothing interesting has popped out at me, until now.  Bush's "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace" - which I've mentioned here a few times before - was released last month, to resounding silence.  Most of the Info Security punditry had already dismissed it as an industry scary-story with few good practical suggestions and a complete lack of serious consequences.  In this Slate opinion piece, New American Brendan Koerner joins the chorus, blaming the security industry, government policy makers and law enforcement agencies for using a serious problem for political and financial gain.  OpenBSD also gets a good mention at the expense of Microsoft, always a crowd pleaser around these parts.