If deleting a blog entry “goes against the free interactive spirit of blogging,” then I guess I’ve been in direct violation of the free interactive spirit of blogging (FISB, pronounced like “Frisbee” without the “r”) for all four iterations of my blog (three now deleted—GASP!—because I’m such a malicious interactive spirit breaker).

Wow . . .

Here’s a different twist on this whole BoingBoing brouhaha (which is truly beyond absurd): FISB gives bloggers the right to do whatever they like with their sites and content.

What’s this sick fascination with regulation?

According to EW.com, Arrested Development’s Jeffrey Tambor confirmed reports that a movie version of the brilliant sitcom is in the works:

After months of speculation, I think we have finally figured out for sure that we are indeed doing an Arrested Development movie.

If you haven’t seen the show, you have plenty of time before the movie comes out to buy the three DVD box sets and watch them twenty or thirty times.

Call me cynical, but when I read the following in Joseph Romm’s Salon article, “Anti-science conservatives must be stopped,” I imagined Chicken Little running around screaming, “The sky is falling.”

To avert disaster, we need to cut carbon emissions in the transportation sector some 60-80 percent by 2050.

Like a good author, Romm writes this sentence with authority . . . yet he backs it up with absolutely no proof.

Why is it that fear mongering has become the preferred choice for firebrands on both sides of the fence, whether invoking the threat of terrorism or global warming? I’m so sick and tired of this seemingly endless shrill shrieking. Remember that old expression about empty vessels making the most sound?

All I know is that fear mongering makes a lot of money for those mongering. Empty vessels, sure, but rich ones, too.

What, me worry?

Class: Fernando Torres.

Classless: Joey Barton.

If only all the beautiful game’s players lived up to Didi’s dead-perfect description.

Congratulations to Spain for playing the beautiful game beautifully; you deserved to win Euro 2008. And thanks to Turkey for some of the most unbelievable comebacks I’ve witnessed and to Russia for guaranteeing plenty of future excitement. This tournament has been a wonderful advertisement for the world’s game, albeit to a world (outside the US) that’s already embraced the beautiful game.

It’s time everyone embraces football.

If the excitement and drama of Euro 2008 has yet to convince you that football is the beautiful game, I give you one more reason (photograph No. 5).

Some days I wonder why I bother to get out of bed:

An acclaimed British author could be charged with committing a hate crime after offering a scathing criticism of Islamic radicalism.

Ian McEwan, author of widely praised novels Atonement and Enduring Love, condemned Muslim extremists for attempting to establish a tyrannical society intolerant of women and homosexuals. His comments were made in the context of defending his friend and fellow novelist Martin Amis, who had previously been denounced as a racist for other supposedly anti-Islamic remarks. . . .

Earlier this year, a police officer in West Midlands told two Christian evangelicals that they could be charged with committing a hate crime for preaching their message in an Islamic neighborhood. “You have been warned. If you come back here and get beaten up, well you have been warned,” he said.

My homeland is fucked.

Be careful, my US friends. Your time is gonna come.

George loves Andy.

Gray has been the extra revelation of Euro 2008. A high-scoring Scottish national a few decades back, he is now a commentator in the English Premiership. He does not blather nonsense at our uneducated American ears, but rather explains why a striker botched his chance in goal mouth or why a keeper was out of position on a corner kick.

Gray may still be a bitter blueshite, but I’d rather listen to him than that annoying little leipreachán, Tommy Smyth, any day of the week.