Is the 49th parallel an unmalleable line, set for all time to be the divider between two parallel worlds?
Some visionaries cry, "NO!" Sure, there will be some changes to get used to.

Some people are thinking ahead.

Good night, Pioneer 10.

No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States. (US Constition - Article II, Section 1, Clause 5)

Why in the world is the "natural born citizen" provision still in the Constitution? It's needlessly exclusionary, antidemocratic, and, as Slate.com puts it, "idiotic."

Donahue is off the air. This bodes badly for the upcoming liberal talk radio project, methinks.

Life in 2002, as imagined by the LA Weekly, 1979. I still can't shake the feeling that this is a put-on written in 2003.

STORMWATCH 2003!!! Sure, it's easy to deride Southern California's obsessive news coverage of incoming precipitation. But it's important to remember that until 1943, Mount Wilson held the US record for rainfall in a 24-hour period -- 26.12 inches (that's about the yearly average for the San Gabriel Mountains; LA's annual average is 14 inches.) Other records: 2.6 inches in one hour (Long Beach, 1995) and 0.65 inches in one minute (Mount Wilson, 1926).

Bob Garfield, on Sunday's On the Media, has the best advice I've heard so far for the nation's panicky Code Orange populace:

Want to protect yourself against terror? Take a roll of duct tape -- you probably have plenty of that -- and cut it carefully into 8 19-inch strips. Take those strips, and cover the screen of your television.

Riders in the Sky have won their second Grammy. I can't say I'm a fan of their Pixar/Disney children's music, but I'm happy for them anyway.

Speaking of the Grammys, this photo of Norah Jones and her five awards just makes me smile. Ten bucks says Britney, Christina, and a million others will release light jazz/pop albums by year's end.

Starwars.com is announcing that Star Wars: Clone Wars will run as twenty animated shorts on the Cartoon Network in 2003-2004. Luckily, these cartoons will be brought to us by Genndy Tartakovsky, he of Samurai Jack and Dexter's Laboratory fame.

Remember those old cigarette vending machines, where you pulled a knob and down *ka-thunk* fell a pack of ciggies? Several dozen of them have been converted to a less lung-cancer-centric vocation -- dispensing art. But don't just take it from me -- www.dagbladet.no raves, "Assosiasjonene til sigaretter og sigarett- automater er mange. Men kunst? Hva har kunst å gjøre i en sigarettautomat? Det spørsmålet stilte aldri grafisk designer og kunstner Clark Whittington seg selv."



Add it to the list.

Sunday, as I was browsing my friendly neighborhood megabookstore, to my very great surprise I came across a new book by Marc Reisner, author of Cadillac Desert. Although Mr. Reisner died in 2000, Pantheon has just released A Dangerous Place, a short book about the dangers of earthquakes to Los Angeles and the Bay Area. The first chapters seem to have been slapped together a little roughly, and go over material covered extensively in Cadillac Desert, but the last part of the book is compelling, scary, and a little bit creepy. Reisner imagines a large (but not worst-case) earthquake along the Hayward fault in the East Bay, in early 2005. Somewhat disturbingly, he seems to put himself into the middle of the action. As one reads the actions that our narrator takes as he locates his daughters on their way home from school, and then later motorboats across the bay to pick up his wife in San Francisco (many of the bridges are closed or partially destroyed), one can't help but recall that this is a man almost three years dead telling a story about himself two years hence.

It's a slight book, by no means as exhaustive as Cadillac Desert, or even the out-of-print and oft-overlooked Game Wars. But as an unexpected last work by an author I had thought forever silenced, A Dangerous Place is a most welcome gift.

Langdon informs us that this year's "Pazz and Jop" list is out. Not even counting the name of the poll, any “best of 2002” list that puts Patty Griffin’s 1000 Kisses at #187 — well below Shania Twain (127) and Justin Timberlake (128) — is a list I can’t possibly take seriously. There. I've said it.

Hey, I can see my house from here...

I am often asked "How do you collect a lot of corks ?" I don't drink so much, but all of my friends who can drink quite a lot keep many corks for me and give me whenever I meet them. So I have tons of used corks !

Corkdoll. Just one more reason I love the Japanese.

If Matt Langdon's Montage website doesn't satisfy your Matt Langdon jones, check out his other film reviews. If all else fails, try his blog.

Douglas Green (Ranger Doug, of Riders in the Sky) has written Singing in the Saddle: The History of the Singing Cowboy, and has shown up flogging his book on NPR's Morning Edition and KPCC-FM's AirTalk, among others.

When not writing, Ranger Doug is also the Idol of American Youth.