Remember Link from the original NES Zelda games? He was awesome.

What do you want to bet that the same kind of people protesting the so-called “Ground-Zero Mosque” are the same type of people I saw in the fall/winter 2001 smiling in vacation photos while posing in front of the smoking ruins of the WTC. – Constantino Tobio

• Crime (Sex) and Punishment (Stoning) – In a recent conversation about cultural divides, a friend told me that the gulf between the West and the Mideast over women is unbridgeable. I pray that he is wrong.
• Some Things Are Simply Not Negotiable – TeacherKen is a fantastic Virginia blogger who teaches US Government to high school students. In this post, written from the heart, he is uncommonly brief, and to that all the more powerful. Go. Read.
• Epic Traffic Jam Enters Its 9th Day – No baloney. There’s Houston traffic, L.A. traffic, D.C. traffic…and then there’s Beijing traffic.
• Scott Adams Tries to Build a Green House – Fascinating story of how the Dilbert creator tried to build an eco-friendly house, and ran into reality in the process.
• “Hookups” Can Turn Into Meaningful Relationships, Study Suggests – Basically, some people aren’t interested in relationships, but date anyway. That skews the data. Interesting read.
• Unemployment Remains High Because People Keep Blowing Their Job Interviews – The Onion, of course. But satire at its best.
• Henry Adams, Fellow Virginian – UVA Dean Meredith Woo reflects on esteemed American historian Henry Adams.
• A Letter To My Students – Shared by Dave Poisson’s former campaign manager, this letter from a Berkeley professor to his students is a remarkable summary of the intergenerational me-firstism that has led to California’s mess, and an illustration of the consequences of the kinds of policies that Richmond is pursuing today.
• Delegate Al Pollard: “Dear Delegate Gilbert” – An “upstream/downstream” discussion about Chesapeake Bay water quality is worth reading here in Loudoun considering the kerfuffle over the proposed Bay Act regulations earlier this year.
• Bush Campaign Chief and former RNC Chair Ken Mehlman is Gay – You probably saw this, but another senior Bush-era Republican came out as gay. Good for Ken to come out at all, that couldn’t have been easy.
• Devalued Homes Anchor Prospective Job Seekers – Yet another consequence of the craptastic mortgage mess, a less flexible labor market.