I find it amusing

That CNN is the only/first major news site to post the Ben Affleck-Jennifer Garner engagement.

So there it is... Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner are engaged. Oh, and Jen's expecting his baby.

I'm not polluting a strictly "intellectual" discussion forum with petty news. I mean, if a prominent U.S. cable news network put it on the front page, it must be important. Oh, but it wasn't the leading story. That would be some new "development" on another affluent, young, and white female missing from Aruba with suspects of minority races.

I know Teagle and others justify it by saying, "well, they're 24/7. They run out of things to say. But it's not like there's no news at all today. I mean, Bush declared war on malaria, TIMES released its anonymous sources to a grand jury subpoena, and the Fed raised interest rates. Even Bennifer 2.0 story's better than the overexposed, prejudiced (how many missing minorities and men do you hear about?), overdone, and shamelessly formulaic story of a missing teen.

For some reason...

I have a feeling that Victor is going to like this one. (complete with images of the articles of clothing, to add to your growing summer apparel-vocabulary)

What is it about summer that occasions the shameless abandonment of propriety and taste? The "tube top," the plastic "jelly" shoe, and the "Daisy Duke" jean short all owe their existence to our seasonal lack of discrimination. Only in the summer do grown and usually well-dressed women don such juvenile and unflattering styles; only in the summer do professional and otherwise passably attired men dress as though preparing to clean out the garage. If you have left your home in the past few weeks, you have no doubt witnessed some of the season's more common missteps: exposed bra straps; bare, bulging midriffs; bad sandals. And you may have asked yourself why the first warm days of the year are like a Halloween costume party—a chance for people to wear whatever (or however little) they desire. After many such alarming sightings, I set out to catalog the worst summer fashion faux pas.

Read the rest.

There's only one sentence with which I disagree in this column:

I know Iraq is not Vietnam.

Everything else is golden.