College football season starts tonight. Go Gators!

Open Thread.

Time for dinner and Big Brother here.

Anyone have any interesting Labor Day plans? Maybe you can get in the mood with Salt of the Earth with Mick and Keith -- the Concert for 9/11 version.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Today's early Open thread.

College football just around the corner. Go Gators!

Open Thread.

Hitting the reset button and figuring out what is on tap for the week.

Until then, Open Thread.

Hurricane Irene is all the talk today.

I'm traveling to Washington today to get a closer look. No blogging until tonight.

Open Thread.

Busy day, but wish me a happy birthday anyway. Like Jack Benny (who?), I'm 39.

Open Thread.

I'm making a huge pot of soup with all the vegetables I bought Saturday at the Farmers Market, and watching Big Brother. Today's 98 degree heat broke a 75 year record.

The New Jersey Supreme Court has ordered changes to rules regarding eyewitness evidence . More on the changes here. The changes are expected to be watched closely by other states.

Currently, a defendant has the burden of proving there was undue suggestion during the identification process. That won't change. But the court has ordered that when a defendant can show some evidence of suggestiveness by police, a pretrial hearing must be held to explore it.

The court also requires a system be developed to better explain to juries the potential flaws with eyewitness identifications.

Steve Jobs has stepped down at Apple. He said:

"I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know," Jobs said in a letter to "the Apple community" that was released by the company. "Unfortunately, that day has come."

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Hectic day for me. No blogging.

Open Thread.

Busy day ahead.

Open Thread.

What Glenn Said.

Open Thread.

I liked this post by Kevin Drum on persuasion:

My own experience, which I think is fairly generalizable, is that within the course of a single conversation hardly anybody ever changes their mind — including me. Arguing is a dominance game, and in a face-to-face confrontation over anything of significance (virtual or otherwise) we hairless apes will go to considerable lengths to avoid conceding dominance. So if we find ourselves on the losing end of a confrontation, we end up simply switching to new arguments, trying to redefine the terms of debate, cherry picking our evidence a little differently, burrowing down into ever more trivial subarguments, or reverting to mockery and then walking away. In other words, pretty much anything other than actually conceding that someone else is right and that our worldview might need to be updated.

That's lawyering. Kevin extrapolates to discussing politics - "arguments will start to sink in maybe a day or a week later when the emotional charge has worn off. You'll probably never know that you've successfully persuaded your adversary, since it's a gradual change that happens offstage and is rarely acknowledged (dominance games again), but it happens. [. . .] Thus politics." I disagree with that - that's political punditry. In politics, a large swath of the electorate has no commitment to a particular belief - if they do have a commitment, it is to jersey color. If there is, it is jersey color commitment. Generally, folks will agree with whoever does best for them- the old "are you better off now" question. Most people don't think about policy, and process even less, than pundits think.

Open Thread.