Ben Williams: “The debut of Jennifer Lopez's J to Tha L-O! The Remixes at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart earlier this year was just another notch on the career bedpost for the multimedia Latina. But for the art of the remix, it was a milestone: the first time an album composed entirely of remixes hit No. 1 in the United States. Serendipitously enough, Lopez's collection followed directly on the heels of her onetime beau P. Diddy's We Invented the Remix—an album whose typically grandiose title, you won't be surprised to hear, is so much hooey. We Reinvented the Remix as a Marketing Ploy would have been more accurate.”

Puffy definitely did not invent the remix, but he, to a certain extent, did event a type of hip-hop remix, where the structure of the song is essentially the same, except with guest artists and a badder attitude. The first Puffy-style hip-hop remix is Craig Mack's "Flava in Ya Ear [remix]", which, in the remix version, featured such luminaries as LL Cool J, Busta Rhymes, Notorious B.I.G. and Rampage. And Puffy's trademark background quips.

Après ça, le déluge.

Leah McLaren: “None of the men I've dated in London could qualify as 'Lads'. They are all professionals: doctors, lawyers, bankers, journalists, business-owners; grown men ranging from their late-twenties to late-thirties, equipped with tidy flats, well-tended gardens and cultural interests that don't include the latest issue of Maxim. And yet, when it came to dating they were about as charming as Liam Gallagher after 12 pints and an eight ball.”

Could it be that they're married to their work?!

Later: “The most common English male dating crime by far is the Non-date Date. This is a strange ritual wherein the English male asks a woman out on a date without indicating that he has any romantic inclinations towards her. Any overt demonstration of desire might make her think he likes her — this is verboten.”

Nice to know that women like undivided attention. Why do we Self-Concsious Boys get the sense that she thinks it's creepy though? “Date number three and you still haven't spent more than half a moment alone with the English male. Doesn't he know that of all life's pleasures women enjoy undivided attention the most? If so, what is he afraid of?”

See the above commentary.

And again: “It wasn't always like this. Ten years ago it was common for Canadian and American women to become 'offended' by men who employed traditional courtly behaviour. Males were dressed down for opening doors and bills were split on principle. Since then, however, there has been a softening of the feminist ethic where romance is concerned.”

Oops, looks like I'm living in the past (referring to my belief that girls think it's creepy, still).

McLaren comes off as a high-class Rebecca Eckler: fluff pieces dominate her columns, but instead of learning what it's like to be pregnant and taking bus trips from one corner of North America to the other, McLaren goes to art galleries to pick up boys. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but at the end of the article, she romanticizes the Simple American Male (SAM for short) and seems unable to acknowledge the possibility that there are Simple British Males ready to make her swoon. Funny though, I know someone who's just like Leah.

Thanks to Paulo for the link. See also my previous McLaren-related incredulity.

Rack-and-Pinion Steering by Scott Memmer

Zing! Way over my head.

What prompted my looking this up? The episode on the Simpsons where Homer visits his long-lost elder brother, who's an auto executive. Homer called it "rack and peanuts steering".

Yahoo! News - Dow Closes Up Nearly 490 Points

"The Dow Jones industrials stormed up almost 490 points, the second-biggest one-day gain ever, and climbed back over 8,000 Wednesday as Wall Street cheered legal and legislative action on the corporate ethics scandals that fueled nine weeks of sharp losses."

Point-increases and point totals are totally irrelevant. What investors should look at is the percentage increase. The only reason point increases make news is because they are big numbers. Anything in three digits is big news, but it really shouldn't be. Single-day increases or decreases of, say, 4% or more are newsworthy. Otherwise, lets stick with political and business scandals, please?

In praise of American empire by Dinesh D'Souza

That'll have to do for now. Took me an hour to find that. But I blame the overwhelming anti-American-Empire bias of the Internet. Yes, that excuse'll do nicely.