Shrinky dinks for everyone!

Wherein I take a mildly amusing concept and drive it so far into the ground that not even Uma Thurman's wicked Kung Fu skills can save it

Take a block of blog posts and distill it to its essence. I'd suggest at least a thousand words and probably no more than two thousand. You need enough for the summarizer to work worth, but small enough to have a manageable summary. I like summarizing to 10% because that seems to leave enough without being completely incomprehensible. I slapped this on a couple of my favorite blogs, so no harm is intended. If you'd like, turn this loose on a blog you hate and reduce to 1%. Oh, the jocularity.

Two days worth of Instapundit (9am, January 13 - January 12) reduced to 10% or 150 words instead of 1409:

While fewer than 100 cases have been prosecuted using satellite imaging since the RMA started its crackdown in 2001, data mining _ coupled with satellite imaging _ pinpoints about 1,500 farms annually that are put on a watch list for possible crop fraud, Hand said. The agency says its spot checklist generated by the satellite data has saved taxpayers between $71 million and $110 million a year in fraudulent crop insurance claims since 2001.

"Everybody spies on everybody. HEH.

Still to come: John Perry Barlow and David Gelernter.

GUILTY AFTER ALL: A while back, I linked to a story about efforts to get DNA testing to find out if executed convict Roger Coleman was guilty after all.

The inevitable silver candlesticks? IRANIAN NUCLEAR BRINKSMANSHIP: Austin Bay offers link-rich commentary.

SOME DRUG-RELATED ADVICE for German Chancellor Angela Merkel:

German firms once dominated the biopharmaceutical field. A SERENITY SEQUEL?

James Lileks, bleat:

Gnat has started a book: the story of a dog family named the Mrples. It’s a story by Miss Maple. That’s the name I’m using to write the story. It’s a good name for a dog family.”

Anyway, Rosicrucianism (the spell checker flagged that one! – Validivar.

Scientology without the, uh, scientology.

I’ve narrowed the new podcast theme music down to 257 songs. The second story was the decision by a historical preservation site to nix some new towers down in the old milling district. (Newspaper’s paraphrase.) The cost of the project: $400 million.

Public subsidy: $0.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve never thought “my, that building is just too tall.” We watched an Olie. The animated stuff, anyway; the live stuff I turn off. Which reminds me! Note to self: buy coins with two heads.

Ann Althouse, January 12:

There's lots of talk today about Alito's wife's succumbing to tears yesterday. Imagine if the Senators were saying awful things about a woman while her husband sat behind her. ADDED COMMENTARY: Alito's wife's crying works to his advantage:

1. It lends credibility to the Republican's spin on the hearings that the Democrats went way out of line with their questions.

3. It humanizes Alito, as a man with a sensitive wife.

Here's an interesting article about "indigo" children:
In "The Indigo Children," Mr. Carroll and Ms. Tober define the phenomenon. That last post talks about the way the newspapers report on the tone of the Alito hearings as if it is weather. Former law dean Ron Cass sees the hearings as warfare -- futile warfare:
Where the Roberts hearings opened with a “history in the making” feel, the Alito hearings are the political equivalent of trench warfare. Alito was ploddingly patient with the Senator. Yesterday, according to the WaPo, "The once-sluggish confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. turned confrontational." Alito edged closer to suggesting that he might be willing to reconsider Roe if he is confirmed to the high court, refusing, under persistent questioning by Democrats, to say that he regards the 1973 decision as "settled law" that "can't be reexamined."

Stephen Green, A few notes on tyranny:

Safely – and legally – ensconced in power, imagine that our President-for-Life started acting like a real dictator. …Oops. Sorry. The point is, you don't need a dictator to have a dictatorship. If you need proof, read Lost Rights by James Bovard. Thoroughly researched, Bovard's book details in hundreds of (footnoted) ways just how our Regulatory State goes about squashing average Americans. Sam Alito is the least of our worries. Let's watch Europe and see. On the other side of that coin, you can bet that the Right would scream bloody murder if a right-friendly dictator was deposed by lefty street violence.