Another Cup? The Swiss Miss has pre-announced a 2006 comeback.

Women's tennis has yet another comeback tale after the announcement by Martina Hingis that she plans to return to the tour next year.

She was only 22 when foot injuries and slumping results caused her to retire early in 2003. It was a surprising, depressing end to a career that peaked very early, with Hingis becoming both the youngest No. 1 player in history and winning all five of her Grand Slam singles titles before her 19th birthday.

Now, at age 25, the Swiss woman has decided that she is fit and well-adjusted enough to plunge back into the brightly lit fishbowl of the women's circuit and try to swim with the generally younger, generally more powerful set.

If she can play, it will be a great comeback to see. This is the young lady, after all, who could beat Venus when even Serena couldn't beat Venus. And she gave up 7 inches and 40 pounds to the elder Williams. She was on a grand slam pace to be one of the truly elite, with 5 singles slam titles by the age of 19 and 8 doubles slam titles (including a grand slam in 1998) by the age of 22. In other words, there's no disputing the talent.

That said, it is likely that playing often against the hard-hitting big girls kept her injuries from healing completely. (It's also pretty clear that it took a psychological toll.) Now she's 25, an age at which a tennis player generally begins to ponder life off the court. Granted, J-Cap managed a brief comeback, winning two slams at 29 and the Aussie at 30. Of course, by the time she came back, she appeared to have been living in the weight room for a few years and was prepared to spar with the big girls.

In the end, I just don't see much here. The smaller ladies can play with the bigger, as Hingis did before and a younger, healthier Henin did for a while. But they're well advised to do it when they're young and still healing well. I wish Martina luck, but I'm betting her return will be brief.

What is wrong with Massachusetts (besides Ted Kennedy)??: Political Correctness has its heart in the wrong place, it's just that it can't stop bleeding all over everyone. The latest example comes from Eno's resident state, er commonwealth: paintings of the Mayflower Compact shouldn't be displayed because the Indi...I mean Native Americans, and wome...I mean womyn, weren't allowed to vote.

It seems local Selectwomyn Sarah Peake, of Provincetown, Mass, didn't like the large oil painting depicting the Pilgrims voting for the Mayflower Compact because the lone Native American portrayed therein doesn't have a ballot, and none of the womyn could vote ... you know because it was 1620!

So...let's stop using any of our U.S. lucre, save either the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin, or better yet the newer "gold" Sacagewea coin, b/c there you have not only a female, er femail (?), but also a heroic Native American. Yes, this could get a bit tough during the holiday season, what with you having to cart around, ummm, carts to hold your money in, but think of all the feelings that will be spared!

Nostrazordamus: Harken back to our annual NFL predictions ... harken.

Leave aside everything I said about T.O. and the Eagles -- leave it aside I tell you. Focus instead on my pick for first coach fired. Focus sharply. Wherein I said:

First coach to get fired: Mariucci. Lions fall to say, 2-7, Mooch gets the boot. Matt Millen steps down from front office to show how bad he can really muck things up.

Well, I was off by two games -- I was a bit more pessimistic in how quickly the team would reach 7 losses, but ultimately, 7 losses was the magic number. The Mighty Millen gave Mooch the chance at 4-6 to turn things around, only to be disappointed as the Lions that Didn't Roar fell to 4-7.

But, don't cry for Mr. Mariucci; he'll pick up some cushy college job for next year like Pete Carroll at USC and in 5 years we'll all be hearing about how smart the guy is. No, the real villain is Matt Millen and the Ford family. Why on earth would you give the GM job to a friggin' linebacker? Do you know how many shots to the head those guys take? Everyone knows the only smart players are the offensive linemen.

Happy Thanksgiving: No plans to blog much, if at all, today, so I'll just say Happy Thanksgiving to everyone (I think that means Razor). Safe travels, don't undercook the stuffing and buy some loose fitting pants. And go Steelers (not till Monday, but it's never too early).

Eno, start chilling the Newkies.

Now, How Hard Was That? (Day Late/Dollar Short Dept.) OSM changes its name back to PajamaSomething, or whatever, plus gives a not-really apology to everyone for jerking their chain. Fine, fine. Just what I suggested on Saturday. (Although if they were the big shit in the blogosphere they think they are, they might have figured it out for themselves a week ago.) But then comes this:

So, in the spirit of "open source," we thought we’d tell you the real story behind the reason for our name change.

Nothing that this crew has done so far has even glanced at the "spirit of open source." This is like a major media outlet saying, "In the spirit of full disclosure . . ." weeks after getting socked for their failure to disclose fully in the first place. It's a laughable attempt to put a virtuous face on a clusterf*ck.

Sorry, guys, you lost me at "Hello." If I want to get sold, softsoaped, and bullshat, I'll stick with traditional print and broadcast media.

Whatever you do: don't call this number.

1-888-353-7667

Kofi-talk: I read this, and all I can think of is this guy.

"You must let me wet my beak a little."

Link via Radley, who is skeptical of Kofi's sincerity.

Good news, bad news: Minnesota's late field goal to beat the Packers put me in the money for the second time in 3 weeks in the local pool. Excellent.

Sure makes that Packers pick to win the NFC North look brilliant, though.

And Why Not? At first I thought this headline said, "Islanders pray to Jesus image on pot plant." Well, sure. If I were three or four joints downstream and I saw Jesus winking at me from under the grow lights, I might fall down and worship too. Alas, that's "plant pot," not "pot plant."

My second thought was, man they'll pray to anyone to get the Stanley Cup again.

Disgraced 70s Rock Star May Face Firing Squad: Oh, please, please, please let it be David Bowie.

Crap.

Astronomy pic of the day: "Uh, Houston? We're fucked."

Traffic: Michael Totten, on driving in Lebanon.

When I first arrived in Beirut I thought Lebanese drivers must be among the worst in the world. They don’t stop at red lights. They drive the wrong way down one-ways. Seat belts are verboten, and the concept of lanes is utterly alien. Speed limits? No way. Traffic circles are unbelievable clusterfucks. Stop signs are suggestions that translate into “slow down just a tad if it’s not too much trouble.” The soundtrack of the city is an unending cacophony of blaring car horns and screeching tires. Busses take up two lanes by themselves, and trucks pass slow cars in oncoming traffic around blind corners. It’s terrifying at times and maddening the rest of the time. Driving on icy mountain roads in January must really be something.

Then something new happened. The whole system just clicked. Rent a car and drive these streets yourself for a while and all of a sudden you can predict what first seemed like deranged and psychotic behavior. Behind every seemingly-crazy driving maneuver is a purpose. The key to predicting what other drivers will do is to ask yourself what you would do if there weren’t any rules and you were guaranteed not to hit anybody. Then you can relax and play the game.

This is all true, to a point. The full-bore Eastern mindset is required, though. I'll give you an example, in the form of one of the stories one of my Mediterranean friends tells. He and some buddies had hired a cab to take them from Cairo to the Red Sea for a weekend, and the driver was hauling ass. On the way, the fog got really thick, to the point where they quite literally couldn't see the road five feet in front of the car. My friend said to the driver, "Don't you think you ought to slow down a little."

"Insh'Allah," said the driver -- "It's in God's hands."

I'm no stranger to fools behind the wheel -- I have been one at times. But that kind of fatalism I can't handle, and I think it factors heavily in how the Middle East's traffic workings developed.

How Latin America's developed, I have no idea.

Up is Down: Sharon and Likud are splitsville.

In a bold gamble, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon left his hard-line Likud party Monday to form a new centrist party, and he asked Israel's president to dissolve parliament and push for a quick March election. Sharon said life in Likud had become insufferable. He described his new party as "liberal" and said it would give Israel new hope for peace.

The man who for years was the embodiment of Likud is too soft for the hardliners and has split to form a centrist party. This is not to say that such news is unexpected. Still, it's amazing how quickly Sharon has changed the political structure in the country. Quiet word on the street says he may even bring Shimon Peres with him -- a political odd couple if there ever was. Giving up the occupied territories will be like working through a snakebite: There will be convulsions. I wonder if Netanyahu can engineer a comeback for Likud. My guess is that, if Sharon can pull this off, he can govern in his own right, without a coalition.

We'll see.

Blogger buzzkill: The whole OSM thing has become such a downer, man. I wish I'd never even thought of it, or sold the idea to Roger L. Simon (that backstabber). And I didn't ask for enough. How was I supposed to know he'd raise that much money? I figured, sure, daily hooker-grams for a year was a fair trade. But it's the same tired old bitch every time, and I'm really getting bored. At least I've kept my name out of it and I'm not getting hammered all over the internet like Roger.

Fuck it. I'm shutting it down. It wasn't meant to be such a pain in the ass.

Update: The Hog on Ice noticed my grumbling earlier. I'm not delusionsal (just annoyed with all the "Inside Pajamas" going on). I know I'm the one who broached the subject here first, by, perhaps foolishly, wishing luck to the founders, so I shouldn't complain too much. I did so because I genuinely enjoy reading several of the people involved, particularly the ones who have made the cut to the exclusive FauxPolitik blogroll. It's stupid to think you know somebody because you read their blog a few times a week, but Stephen Green, Jeff Goldstein, Michael J. Totten, and John Cole all seem like fine fellows and better, or at least more prolific, writers than me and if they can make a buck through OSM, more so than with BlogAds, then great. Instapundit is one of the first two or three sites I hit in the morning, just to see if aliens have invaded or Bush has been assasinated. For getting up early and reading 1,000 blogs or whatever he does I wish him all the best. A Carnival of Glenn!

I don't think I've read Charles Johnson more than once or twice, I haven't read Roger Simon in over a year, that I remember, and I thought LaShawn Barber was a man until I read differently in one of Hog's posts today. Obviously these people do not link to me or this site in any way. As I said in a previous comment, I've got no dog in this fight.

Eno and Razor have both offered sharp criticism of OSM on this site, every bit and more deserved. But in the end, who cares. Eno said, "Sigh. I'm thinking about quitting blogging again. It's starting to take on a slightly foul vibe." It is, but but the beauty of the internet is that vibe is wiped out with a click of the mouse. We're not invested in their enterprise, literally or figuratively, and the good writers who are involved will still be good writers if it crumbles. In the meantime I'm trying to avoid, if not blogging, at least the circular firing squad that the blogosphere has become over this issue.

So I'm sorry I brought it up.

For What it's Worth: He said/he said, I suppose, but some interesting reading regarding Pajama/OSM. I sure don't know which is true, but it all sounds pretty crappy any way you slice it.

Link via Althouse.

More: What I hate about blogs. Check out all the comments on Roger's post (linked above). It's all, "Oh, yeah, Roger. You da man! Good job cutting loose that whacko before he burned you. And OSM's critics are drowning in jealousy." Plus other examples of comment trash humping Roger's leg. "This is so high school," says Roger -- meaning the fracas from Dennis the Peasant -- but he could say the same about the starf*cker types in his comments.

Sigh. I'm thinking about quitting blogging again. It's starting to take on a slightly foul vibe.

More More: I guess I'm not quitting right away. Jarvis has more on how to fix OSM. They're good suggestions, though there's probably not enough goodwill floating around. Seems like the only folks saying nice stuff about OSM are on the board. Glenn Reynolds has posted some tepid and bland (surprise!) criticism, and he notes that David Corn has too. Wow, OSM is an equal opportunity load of nebulous crap!

Social Conservatism: George Will waxed splenetic (for him, anyway) on those who cannot distinguish "Intelligent Design" from science.

The storm-tossed and rudderless Republican Party should particularly ponder the vote last week in Dover, Pa., where all eight members of the school board seeking reelection were defeated. This expressed the community's wholesome exasperation with the board's campaign to insinuate religion, in the guise of "intelligent design" theory, into high school biology classes, beginning with a required proclamation that evolution "is not a fact."

But it is. And President Bush's straddle on that subject -- "both sides" should be taught -- although intended to be anodyne, probably was inflammatory, emboldening social conservatives. Dover's insurrection occurred as Kansas's Board of Education, which is controlled by the kind of conservatives who make conservatism repulsive to temperate people, voted 6 to 4 to redefine science. The board, opening the way for teaching the supernatural, deleted from the definition of science these words: "a search for natural explanations of observable phenomena."

I'm not here to shoot down the ID crowd. (In fact, I've tried to stay out of it even as people whose opinions I tend to respect get this horribly, horribly wrong.) But it's becoming clear that ID is, contrary to its claims, either a stalking horse for the religious right's big toe, which wants to get in the public school door, or at least fairly unresistant to being buggered into the same role. Creation science is obviously not science. Does the theory of evolution answer all our questions? Nope. But to say that it is "just a theory" is like saying the same of Newton's theory of gravitation. Newton didn't, after all, explain what gravity is, where it comes from, or at what level of matter it inheres. He just noted it as a property of bodies, and measured it pretty damn well. Now, Aristotle said that rocks fall to the ground because that's where they are meant to be, whereas birds fly up into the air because that is where they are meant to be. This, too, is a "theory" and, in the logical terms of ID, as equally valid as Newton's. But it's not the same thing. Darwin explained evolution more clearly than Newton explained gravitation -- yet, for the most part, nobody f*cks with Newton, perhaps because (with an exception or two) they end up on their asses. Those who dispute evolution do too, but less obviously.

More Pajamas: Roger Simon's feelings appear hurt.

Recently my OSM colleagues and I have been subjected to all kinds of criticism, much of it well intentioned and warranted. But a fair amount has been surprisingly personal, bordering on the abusive. (My wife and I were about to allow our precocious daughter to have an internet connection, but now we think we'll postpone it.) Some of this criticism came from people my colleagues and I thought were friends who did not even give us the common courtesy of querying us on why we did a certain thing. Besides being rude, that's not very good reporting from an MSM or blog perspective.

For a guy who is supposedly up to his neck in blog-world vision, he doesn't seem to realize that this is a rough-and-tumble place. We're not playing beanbag, here. Not all of Roger's comments over the years have been charitable, not to mention sourced. Even if they were, he can't have failed to notice that, while one billionth of the internet is about careful reporting and fact-checking, the rest of it is . . . well, okay, the rest of it's basically porn. But, in blogging, the rest of it's vitriol: fiskings, insults, and heavy doses of satire. (Let's hear it for vitriol and porn!) To suddenly complain that the blogosphere is not playing by Marquess of Queensbury rings a bit false. Look, the MSM is the civilized Continent. Everything there is fair and balanced (as long as you agree with their biases, in both directions). The blogosphere is the Wild West: Shoot first, update later. It's not fair. Never has been. But it is the antidote to the fair content we already get from the networks and the major city papers.

See, this is what I was saying. These "visionaries" in the end want to see the blogosphere become the MSM (or at least become like it). I say piffle: meet the new boss; same as the old boss. I want to see it shadow the MSM. I'm not advocating libel, as such (although sometimes some people need a good libeling); I'm just not in favor of trying to overlay some kind of structure on the lovely chaos that already works for me. Nor do a want a bunch of finger-waggers like Roger L. Simon saying "That's not cricket!" when the engine is turned on them.

Finally, blogging is a toy, a hobby; it's not really that important. Sure, maybe we can beat the MSM at their game now and again, or tomahawk some lying media weasel so badly that the MSM has to run the story of one of its own getting filleted online. But let's not kid ourselves here. There are some (obviously) who are taking this like religion. The rest of us are drunk, misanthropic cranks or jerk-offs with more bandwidth than expertise -- and we're proud of it, too.

Emperor's New Pajamas: The Pajama Crew is doing its best impression of the MSM (deny, spin, deny, obfuscate) over their new name, Open Source Media, which, it turns out, is already taken.

We’re seeing a lot of blog traffic about this, so we thought we’d clear some things up. On Wednesday a blog and news site launched under the name “Open Source Media.” As you might guess, this left us a little perplexed, so we sent them an email and posted this. By 5:00 Thursday afternoon we had not received a response to our email, so we printed a copy and Fedexed it. They did, however, post something to their own site under the title “About Our Name."

Then, Thursday evening as we were drafting this post, “About Our Name” became unavailable again on their website. [It's back up. --Eno] We aren’t sure how to interpret that, so we’ll just go ahead and address the one response they did briefly make public.

Hmmmm. Sounds like something CBS would pull, doesn't it? Read the whole thing, as the pajama crowd would say. I got this link from Steve H., who -- along with Moxie and Jeff Jarvis -- is all over this circus.

Again, I've got nothing against this venture, misguided as I think it is, and I like many of the bloggers involved. I just . . . ah, f*ck it. Read Jeff's post instead.

Yet Open Source Media, the whatever-it-is, promises this — with more haughtiness than I’d ever heard from Dan Rather — on its prevaricating post about the name:

The goal of our enterprise is to bring gravitas and legitimacy to the blogosphere…

Oh, gag me with a mitre.

I don’t think that blogs need to have legitimacy laid upon them … and who died and made you the legitimizer?

And gravitas? Good God, big, old media has an oversupply of that. That’s what got them in such trouble. And that’s what we’re running away from.

Previously, I was merely amused and confused by whatever-we-should-call whatever-it-is. Now I’m cringing as I await the sound of trains crashing.

Isn't there someone, anyone, over at Pajama . . . er, Open Source . . . er, OSM . . . who can step forward and offer some transparency, honesty, and accountability on this? Dead silence instead.

A coup in his d'etat: Over on protein wisdom, Jeff post this article from the Guardian re: Iran's president Ahmadinejad.

Iran is facing political paralysis as its newly elected president purges
government institutions, bringing accusations that he is undertaking a coup
d’état.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s clearout of his opponents began last month but
is more sweeping than previously understood and has reached almost every branch
of government, the Guardian has learned. Dozens of deputy ministers have been
sacked this month in several government departments, as well the heads of the
state insurance and privatisation organisations. Last week, seven state bank
presidents were dismissed in what an Iranian source described as “a coup d’état”

The guy is getting bolder and crazier and, hopefully, more people there will get fed up with him and bring his career to a sudden end. This line, though, is what I really found odd.

Mr Ahmadinejad drew international condemnation after he made comments about
wiping Israel off the map.

If that's true, it was the quietest condemnation in history. I couldn't get away from coverage when Pat Robertson said we should bump off Hugo Chavez (or now, as he stumps for creationism). Bush's motives for liberating a people from a first rate dictator are questioned in the harshest terms with no proof of bad faith. But I didn't hear word one, offline anyway, about the president of a huge country in a critical region unequivocally express his desire to eliminate a country. And I don't count this, since Annan clearly found the whole thing rather unimportant and even found room in the statement to remind Israel of its "obligations."

I'm sure his statements need to be understood in context, though.

Thought Crime: I think this has come up before; I'm too lazy to surf the archives to find out. Holocaust denying "historian" David Irving, famous for a failed libel case a few years back, has been arrested in Austria.

Irving was detained on a warrant issued in 1989 under Austrian laws that make Holocaust denial a crime, Golia said. The accusation stemmed from speeches Irving delivered that year in Vienna and in the southern town of Leoben.

I'm not going to rant about this, since the self-evidence of the foolishness, whatever your views on the Holocaust, is towering. I'll just smirk a bit. See that smirk, Austria? It's because of how dumb you'll look throwing this moron in the clink for 20 years. Go ahead. Maybe you'd like to throw me in jail for saying that Heinz Fischer looks like the product of a quick, sleazy tryst between Imelda Marcos and Kim Jong-il. Idiots.