I was going to write about fashion and art and whimsy (and death and depression and cancer) inspired by the obit page, but then I read something really scary and important on The New York Times front page.

The really big question, an urgent avenue for investigation, is what exactly the National Security Agency was doing before that night, under Mr. Bush’s personal orders.

Is more what we really need?

In my opinion not.

But running spies is not the NSA's job. Listening is, and more listening is what the NSA knows how to organize, more is what Congress is ready to support and fund, more is what the President wants, and more is what we are going to get.

He first thanked Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia whose aide was arrested after trying to carry loaded weapons into the Russell Senate Building, for providing security at the Hilton. He then expressed whimsy over what life was like more than a year ago, when his approval ratings were in the 30’s, his Supreme Court nominee had been withdrawn, and his vice president had gone hunting and shot a friend.

Confronted with a blank surface, he will cover it with scenes of anti-authoritarian whimsy: Winston Churchill with a Mohawk, two policemen kissing, a military helicopter crowned by a pink bow.

While some adults may shake their heads and dismiss such an event as typical anti-establishment "kids stuff," the truth is Saturday's event was no fleeting flight of anti-authoritarian whimsy—the students have worked their butts off to earn their stripes as "peaceniks."

Entire scenes are sabotaged by whimsy.

As Linden Labs' Philip Rosedale, the confab's most mesmerizing speaker, assuringly put it, all media breakthroughs started not with a clear-cut business plan but with "whimsy."

When I entered the Chinoise Tea Pavilion, "I Feel Good" was playing, James Brown’s muscular funk an odd counterpoint to the busy Orientalist whimsy.

Kill Bill is no orientalist whimsy.

Coleridge's gaunt Mariner... [ Read More (1.2k in body) ]