Don’t ask. Just read as Posnanski riffs on being a dad and living in the future.

Are hot. Don’t take my word for it. A great little video, tipped to me by the wonderful Orac. Always listen to a man who takes his internet nom de plume from the world’s greatest unknown sci-fi show.

(Those of you reading from England and Australia can watch said show on DVD. Those of us in America are screwed unless we buy a region-free DVD player.)

I was often drawn to nerdy girls when I was single. Granted, I can always appreciate the draw of the more superficial aspects of the female of our species. But more often than not it was the girl with glasses, a cute smile and a higher SAT score than mine.

Of course, going to college at a small liberal arts college and doing the grad school thing somewhat restricted the subset of women to which I was exposed. I actually wrote an equation about it.

All together now. Awwwww.

Radley Balko links to another trove of color pictures of the past — this time of Nazi Germany. Again, I find that seeing these color images makes those times far more real and visceral than the black and white I”m used to.

It seems like the entire internet is shutting down these days. I guess it’s a result of the recession — people don’t have time to write blogs. But several sites I’ve enjoyed — Baseball Toaster, Top Five, Fire Joe Morgan, Pajamas Media, Stephen Bainbridge, Culture 11 — are shut down or about to be.

I guess it’s the inevitable consolidation that was due for the blogosphere. For now, I’m still here.

This is enough to make some a feminist. But it would be thoughtless, insensitive and evil of me to point out the pressure to engage in insane fashion trends comes mostly from other women. I have yet to meet a man who thinks anorexia or foot-binding is hot. Quite the contrary in fact — most men like women with some curve and non-gangrenous feet.

And men aren’t exempt from evil fashion stupidity. I’m still convinced that neckties shorten one’s lifespan.

I just caught the first five minutes of the new Knight Rider show. It is indeed as bad as I thought. Bad enough to get me off my butt to change the channel.

I’ve simply got find that remote.

Megan McArdle and Dan Drezner ask whether undergrad or grad school forms more of your character.

For me, it was definitely grad school. Part is that I was in a smaller tighter social circle — most of whom are still in my profession. I also shaped my career, which is a bigger influence on your life than how much gin you drank one spring break.

But the larger part is that I spent most of my undergrad years overcoming social awkwardness and enjoying being out of my parents’ house (i.e., wine, women and song — well, at least wine). I was much more serious about my career in grad school — I had an actual direction. Ironically, this freed up more time for having fun, reading classic novels and enjoying life. I even had a romantic life in grad school!

In reading a review of Paris Hilton’s awful movie, I came across this good point:

But the real reason this film was savaged by critics is because Paris Hilton is the poster child for our current tabloid-blogosphere-TMZ-fueled obsession with the inane details of celebrities’ social lives. At the same time, it’s become hip among the more, shall we say, sanctimonious bloggers and critics to make knee-jerk declarations that the world is slowly getting dumber, to fondly reminisce about some golden intellectual age that never existed, and to piece together half-hearted comparisons between contemporary American culture and the fall of the Roman Empire. To those people, Paris Hilton represents the End of Western Civilization As We Know It.

Eh. To me, she’s just a vapid socialite who got famous for being famous. Nobody really thinks this a new thing, do they? I mean, honestly, what the heck did Edie Sedgwick ever do, really? Why does everyone know the name Charo? Why the hell was Anna Nicole Smith famous, again? And what, exactly, has Carmen Electra ever done with her life?

People act like it’s a new, shocking, outrageous thing that someone with no perceptible talent became a household name. But if anything, Paris Hilton just breathed new life into an ages-old phenomenon. The only thing that’s arguably different these days is that fame has become more pervasive, as people demand more and more information about celebrities at their fingertips. People complain that Paris and her ilk are always in our faces, and yet, her name is consistently one of the most popular internet search terms. Come now, Paris didn’t make you type her name into Yahoo, did she?

I’m sure back in Ancient Rome, the people followed the adventures of spoiled socialite Lutetia Villa just as ardently. We always seem to have a place for pretty but useless people.

I will add this in defense of Paris. The video she did on energy policy for her “presidential campaign” was quite funny. And she made more sense than the actual candidates.

Marc Ambinder tips us to this site, where you can check the frequency of words used in inaugural addresses. “Non-believers”, “muslims” and “data” were words used for the first time by Obama today. The first one really jumped out at me as it’s the first time I can recall that a President has acknowledged atheists (I’m not one, incidentally, but I play one on the internet).

It’s a fun tool to play with. Something interesting I found: “God” barely shows up at all in speeches until Lincoln and hits its peak under Reagan. “Slaves” and “slavery” were basically unsaid until Lincoln. Bush was the most prominent user of “freedom” and “liberty”, ironically enough. “Security” peaked with Truman. Obama only said change once, far less than Clinton, Johnson or Taft. So apparently, Taft was change we could believe in before Obama was. Who knew?

Still waiting for someone to say “suckers”.

Something’s running amuck in Amazon’s systems. They just recommended that I buy the Queen Latifah triple feature because I had previously bought … Lord of the Rings.

Apparently, I have become part of a null set.

The dramatic crash into the Hudson today (about which I wrote at Right Thinking) got me to this article in Time about survival, panic and Rick Rescorla. A must-read.

The most dramatic thing that jumps out is that people respond better to crisis with training. For example, all those fire drills you did in school actually do result in better responses to real-life fires. In the absence of prior knowledge or training, people tend to freeze.

I’ve read similar about the Holocaust, how Jews would just stand there and get shot or walk calmly into gas chambers because they simply had no mental apparatus for dealing with what was happening to them.

When I get on a plane, I actually look around for an exit and think about what I’ll do if there is a crash. I think I’ll be doing that a little more seriously from now on.

And doing fire drills when the family gets older.

What the deuce?

Just in time for your mom Santa to toss this in your Christmas stocking, Burger King has released a limited-edition men’s body spray that evokes the smell of freshly broiled Whoppers. But isn’t this what they spray on the burgers already for authenticity? No! According to a press release, “The King is setting hearts ablaze for the holidays with his new scent of choice. FLAME™, a new men’s body spray by Burger King Corp., features the scent of seduction with the hint of flame-broiled meat. A favorite of the King, FLAME™ is available for purchase for a limited time at select Ricky’s retailers in-store or online.” Because nothing’s more romantic than the scent of mass-produced beef patties…except maybe the sultry FLAME™ website, which is really putting us in the mood (for salad).

I have the wrong number of X-chromosomes to answer this. But do women really get turned on by the smell old grease and broken dreams? No wonder I couldn’t get lucky in high school.