As promised to Jonathan Last, a few anecdotes from my review of Predators at War that were omitted:

In one of the more disturbing moments of the documentary, a lioness follows a leopard up a tree where the leopard is trying to eat his kill (an antelope) alone. The lioness successfully pulls the carcass away while the leopard is left to sulk. But the lioness can’t seem to figure how to get back down. One fatal slip later, the lioness is dangling from the tree, lifeless, her back broken. Another lioness climbs halfway up, pushes the hanging body to the ground, and proceeds to cannibalize it.

A clan of hyenas, regarded to have “steel-trap minds,” is joined by a nomad hyena. The viewer can’t tell the difference but the clan can by scent. They surround and harass him until he is a bloody mess. Amazingly, they let him go, apparently finding something else better to do.

Lions and hyenas are perceived as archenemies on the plain, probably because they compete most often for the same sources of food. In one instance, a lion comes upon a young hyena, abandoned and injured. The lion, having finished his own meal, decides nevertheless to kill the cub. But he doesn’t eat it. Instead he leaves it there and marks it as his territory before leaving.

Who would you pick in a caged death match? The lion, hyena, cheetah, leopard, or African wild dog? On Predators at War (airing this Sunday at 9pm on the National Geographic Channel), these ferocious carnivores face off, not in the ring but on a drought-stricken South African game reserve. And the winners are nowhere near obvious, as I mention in my review for The Daily Standard.

Andrew on Michelle Malkin.

This story about a Florida college banning The Passion of the Christ doesn’t look very good.

Particularly since the school allowed “F**cking for Jesus,” a live production which “described simulated sex with ‘the risen Christ.'”

FIRE is on the case.

Kaus keeps going:

CNN’s Jonathan Klein shows off his crackling, Web-savvy intelligence:

I don’t think that blogging, which is, you know, glorified Web-site hosting—that’s what it is.

P.S.: He added, “Sometimes you leave people behind.” Oh wait. That was Chris Bangle, not Klein. Sorry. I get my arrogant-know-it-alls-in-the-middle-of-degrading-large-institutions all mixed up. … Mash-up blogging–it’s the latest thing.

Patrick Hynes has an interesting piece in the American Spectator about the Kos-Dean bucks-for-blog arrangement. I’ve thought that this says more about Dean than Kos. Hynes agrees.

But Galley Reader J.W. asks an interesting question:

Here’s something I haven’t seen any blogger address yet. Kos fessed up about taking cash from Dean. But at the same time he admitted he had taken money from other politicians (apparently) but refused to disclose their identities. He said he had a nondisclosure agreement with them. So it is certain that Kos took cash from people his readers never knew about, and probably shilled for them on his blog. Is he still doing this? The nondisclosure agreements seem to create a real ethical conundrum–we will never know which opinions on his site Kos is being paid for, and which are gratis. How can his readers trust the guy?

Good point. What’s the use of disclosure about being paid if you won’t say who’s paying you? Doesn’t that make a blog kind of like an infomercial? (Amazing Discoveries!–Hosted by Kos) I say this without judgment. There are plenty of people who get up early on Saturday morning to watch the infomercials because there’s entertainment value in them. Speaking only for myself, I can’t get enough of Tony Little, the ADD body-builder who hawks the Gazelle. So if Daily Kos is an infomercial, and not really feature programming, that shouldn’t necessarily eat into his audience any. It just means that other bloggers need to consider him differently.

Just another shout-out to Captain Ed for having the most comprehensive analysis of the CBS Report that I’ve seen yet. If you read just one piece about the Thornburgh-Boccardi report, this should be it.

Can’t get enough Gallagher-freude? The new CulturePulp is out, and Mike Russell actually got to swing the Smash-O-Matic.

You had no idea cartoons could be so mean.