Dick Cheney, the man who wants us to elect him to the Vice Presidency on a ticket of integrity and straight-talk, Sunday dismissed questions about his voting record as “trivia.” What “trivia” was it the reporters were asking about? Cheney’s vote in 1985 against a resolution urging the release of Nelson Mandela from prison. He also consistently voted against sanctions against the overwhelmingly racist South African government. Colin Powell must have been real proud to be speaking yesterday at the convention in which Cheney will be nominated.

Dahlia Lithwick lashes into Laura Bush, and the rest of the “GOP slumber party,” gently reminding the world that women voters demand more than the lipservice and pirouetting that has taken place at the convention thus far. (Have I mentioned how much I like Dahlia’s writing? Oh, yeah… many times.)

Sports Illustrated takes a well-deserved beating for its cover of Anna Kournikova a month back. The week she was on the cover, the NBA Finals were going strong, Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens pitched near-perfect games against each other, and Kournikova got swept out of the second round of the French Open. Bah.

I installed Windows 2000 Service Pack 1 on all my computers over the past two days, with no problems. At this point, I would recommend that others start moving towards it, at least on non-essential computers that at least resemble the production machines in your environment (the better to test it with your particular application and networking needs).