I always do. That first microsecond of awareness is The Golden Moment, when your subconscious picks up the subtle cues, when your peripheral vision notices all the players. Your initial inclinations are usually spot-on. But then we decide to overlook, for example, the poor condition of the restaurant because we don't want to make a statement by leaving or whatnot, and the second thoughts come bursting in, breathless with an armload of justifications and rationalizations and we give in to doubt.

Now some of you, I'm sure, are already shaking your heads, thinking, "Oh, no, snap judgements are often wrong," and I understand that. But I'm not talking about giving extra weight to biases, prejudices, or anything like that. Because The Golden Moment kicks in a microsecond before any of those pesky things enter the picture. It's more like Taoism, a sense of "going with the way the universe wants to go," and to do that requires all of your senses, tuned and being directly in the flow of things.

A lot of what we call ESP or being especially sensitive falls into this idea, that the logical, reflective mind is 90% monkey chatter at the very least, and you wouldn't want Bonzo at the steering wheel, now would you.

We Beg to Differ

Spotted this op-ed at the Washington Post this morning: Don't Blame Diversity, by Terry Neal. This is more on the Jayson Blair incident, which we're following with all the rabid expectation of a Southern sheriff tailing a VW bus sporting a psychedelic paint job. There's some real dirt in this story, and it looks like Questions Will Be Asked.

Can't figure out what the Feds are doing, sniffing around this case. But it looks like they're trying to find an entry point. Might be interstate fraud, or maybe a civil rights violation, but if they want in, they'll have to duke it out with the Times people, who are circling the First Amendment wagons around the pressroom.

Terry Neal says that this story isn't about diversity (i.e., affirmative action hiring at the Times), that it's wrong to raise concerns about Blair's position as a minority hire because what he did has been done before. Neal's all wet, we say, because Blair wasn't hired on the basis of his talent, and that managing editor Gerald Boyd protected him from criticism.

Why did Blair keep getting promotions and prime assignments? Here's my theory: Freed from the normal constraints of truth and veracity, "journalists" such as Blair, Shalit, Barnicle, Smith and Glass outshine their counterparts. They're promoted ahead of the pack because their stories, sneakily cloaked as journalism, read better than everyone else's.

Def Comedy Jihad

The end of the Cold War kinda put a damper on Russian comedian Yakov Smirnoff's career. Remember him? Well, politics makes for interesting humor, so keep an eye out for Shazia Mirza, the Islamic comic.

She wears the hijab, and carries herself as an average devout Muslim, except of course that she's a 27-year-old Londoner with a master's degree in biochemistry. So you can tell she's bright. Here's a sample from her routine:

—About the male gaze: "I was walking past this building site in Mecca when a group of Muslim builders shouted, 'Show us your...face.'"

—About arranged marriages: "My friend Julie says, 'How can you sleep with someone you don't know?'—but she does it all the time."

—On the search in Iraq for Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction: "Look up his wife's purdah (dress), because nobody looks up there."

Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Mirza captured laughs this way: "My name is Shazia Mirza...At least that's what it says on my pilot's license."

Tailgate Followup

Remember that road rage incident in Atlanta we mentioned a few days ago? There's been a development.

Turns out the driver of the 1996 Ford F-250 pickup truck was 32-year-old Paul Samuel Gardner, who you can see here is a real sweetie. According to the highway patrol, he "engaged" the white Blazer driven by 21-year-old Kera Koon last Saturday, and the two vehicles started playing freeway tag.

"[According to Gardner] he speeds ahead of the Blazer, gets in front, slams his brakes a couple of times, causing the driver of the white Blazer to lose control," McCastle said. "The vehicle flipped several times."

Take the Red Pill

If you're a Matrix fan, I guess that means something or other. Anyway, I thought the first film had an interesting premise: perceived reality is a software program.

Weirdly enough, the Christian Science Monitor has an article exploring the religious symbolism of the Matrix films that's actually a rather good read.

"There's two ways to look at this from a Christian perspective," says Glenn Yeffeth, editor of the book "Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in The Matrix." "One is that it's retelling the story of Christ," he says. "The other way to look at it is a very violent film filled with garden-variety blasphemy that exploits people's resonance with the Christian narrative to fool people into a story that is fundamentally atheistic."

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