NERD MARDI GRAS: The Flickr San Diego Comic-Con group.

YOUR COMICS-RELATED BLOG POST THAT MADE ME LAUGH OUT LOUD OF THE DAY: Dave Intermittent (from almost two months ago) on DC's The Great Ten: "I mean, c'mon: the Mother of Champions, who can, and I quote, "birth a litter" of superhumans every couple of hours? Why not just call her the Yellow Horde and be done with it. And no less than four characters who look like folks with homes on Zu, the Magic Mountain? This is like having an JLA made up of three cowboys, Scarface, and two rappers (which was, the lineup of JLA Detroit, of course)." Hehehehehee.

(And yes, Morrison's involved with The Great Ten, so there's a very good chance he's playing with our expectations of what Chinese superheroes should be like, or commenting on the one-child policy, or blah blah blah blah, but he may have gotten too clever for his own good with Mother of Champions.)

BRINGING NEW MEANING TO THE TERM "GROPENFUHRER": Majikthise on Bush & Merkel.

WHEN YOU'VE LOST BELGRAVIA DISPATCH, ETC.: Remind me to never fool Gregory Djerejian into thinking my weird eternal war-loving political movement was not complete insane. The blowback is brutal.

THAT'S OUR BUSH: Note that--in addition to blaming the Syrians for the Hezbollah incursions and totally no-selling Tony Blair--his mouth was full of food the entire time. It was like Bruce Campbell playing the ugly American in the "first you want to kill me then, then you want to kiss me--blow" banquet scene in Army of Darkness, except you know Bush isn't pretending to be loathsome. I'm surprised he didn't spit some seeds out or something.

Note: Is "shit" no longer a profanity? Both NPR and CNN ran the clip without beeping.

JUVENTUS RELEGATED: I was worried they'd get off easy--in the sense of not being dropped to Serie C--but what they did receive was about as bad: Serie B with a huge 30 point penalty, which isn't much different from going to Serie C, since there's probably no way they can make it back to A for at least two years. Plus they've been stripped of their last two titles. And that's with bending the rules in consideration of Juventus' popularity; as this article points out, when Genoa was found guilty of fixing one match, they were busted down to C from A. Juventus was found guilty of fixing two whole seasons, and they're only going down to B. But like I said, with the penalty, it sort of evens out, though it seems like if the letter of the law was followed they'd be getting the soccer club death penalty. That article helpfully explains that if Juventus was made non-viable the Italian game itself would suffer, like (I guess) what the Yankees suddenly ceasing to exist would mean for baseball. (Have you ever noticed that the NFL is a strong enough product to exist without any one of it's member franchises? I think that's true.)

Berlusconi's AC Milan remain in A but are kicked out of Champions League/UEFA Cup. Fiorentina and Lazio go to B with smaller penalties. They've all vowed to appeal, so there's still a chance for altered sentences, but as of right now the Italian prosecutors have not allowed the World Cup victory to influence them. This is a good thing.

WELL, POOP: A quote found on the blog of Drum:

And yet another from Gregory Petsko: "Almost without exception, the talented women I have known have believed they had less ability than they actually had. And almost without exception, the talented men I have known believed they had more."

From an actually freely accessible WSJ piece. So if I'm a male who thinks I'm untalented, I'm probably right? Maybe I can go to overconfidence classes.

.....though, thinking about it, Petsko was talking about science talent, as there's plenty of writers and artists out there who thought their stuff was crap when it wasn't. Good thing I've picked bioinformatics as a career! Oh, wait....

SUMMING UP L'AFFAIRE D'FRISCH: In its current form as of the evening of 7.12.06, before it degenerates into something even more idiotic, like Greenwald vs Patterico: Ann Althouse:

I agree Frisch has a big problem. She's the weakling who entered a drinking match with a man who can drink you under the table. She lost control. She paid the price -- a big one. Goldstein's you-talked-about-my-child move is a strong one, but it's a move nonetheless, made by a person who likes to play the game... hard. He's not a victim. He's one of the people who has advanced himself in the blogosphere by making it hostile and ugly. Like all of us, he is capable of being hurt by a genuine crazy. But why not just delete the trolls? Why rile them?Some of them really aren't playing with a full deck. Why push weak people until they lose control? It's an ugly game, and I think Jeff knows he plays it.

Via (I think) one of the interminable Sadly, No! threads on the subject. Feel my shame, oh Internets, for having followed this whole episode.

AWWWW: Japanese spammers have appropriated Diana's old digs. This is her least auspicious retirement.

AH, ZIDANE: Goes from "too old to play well" at the beginning of the World Cup, then to "resurgent old fella" up until the moment he became "inexplicable headbutt guy" with ten minutes to go in the second overtime. I love the World Cup, and '06 will be remembered not for Italy winning on one missed French penalty kick but for the headbutt heard 'round the world.

YOUR INCONGRUOUS BIT OF TELEVISION PROGRAMMING OF THE DAY: The Road Warrior on the History Channel. I had no idea it was a documentary about 1980s Australia.