Have you heard about this book? Author David Horowitz lists 100 (well, 101) academics whom he says “spew violent anti-Americanism, preach anti-Semitism, and cheer on the killing of American soldiers and civilians—all the while collecting tax dollars and tuition fees to indoctrinate our children.” Yowza.

So far, I’ve only found a list of historians mentioned in the book but am trying to find a complete listing somewhere.

My hope is that someone from Virginia Tech is on the list. Otherwise, I’ll feel sort of robbed that I didn’t get a “dangerous” education. (Other than, you know, on Fraternity Row.)

For the record, the only intolerance I saw at Tech, other than intolerance towards frat boy broadcast majors who skip class a lot, was the engineering department’s insistence that women couldn’t hack it as engineers, despite the fact that my girlfriend Mary Ann did quite well in the program and afterwards. I suspect the professors’ attitude had a lot more to do with why Mary Ann was one of the few women in most of her classes.

The only semi-political cause I saw at Tech that stirred up more than 10 or so people (of a student body in the tens of thousands) was student parking, which was capable of generating marches and protests.

Well, I’ve been alluding to it forever, but the Hesperia Star Web site has been joined by a new blog (currently located at Blogger) and a podcast.

We’ve been working on the podcast since December and Stephan Wingert, our publisher, first floated the idea of going to a blog-style format for the Star’s online presence in January and asked that we put together a proof-of-concept blog.

Both the blog and podcast are in their earliest stages right now, and I suspect Peter and I will tweak them both a great deal over the next few months, but both have the potential to let us do lots of new things, which few other newspapers are doing, which is exciting in itself.

So, Sunday morning, I’m sitting on the couch, watching Olympic skiing on TiVo, while the kittens are racing around, tearing up the place, like they always do in the early morning.

To calm them down, I pick up this red jingle bell octopus toy, and toss it into the dining room. Lucky outraces Hanna, picks it up in his mouth, and trots proudly back in my direction, having claimed the title of Fierce Red Jingle Bell Octopus Toy Killer. And then he drops it near my feet, and proceeds to wrestle with his sister.

To get them off my feet (ow, claws), I toss the octopus again. Lucky is on it like a streak, and again brings it back. This time, he looks up at me, watching.

I pick the toy up, and throw it again.

He returns it.

And slowly, I start to realize that we’re playing Fetch.

Now, I’ve heard of cats doing this before, but we’ve owned a lot of cats as we’ve traveled around the world, and none of them have ever done this. Heck, our dogs never seemed to particularly grasp the concept.

But Lucky did it for about 20 minutes this morning — I had to stop because he eventually got so excited, he would attack my hand as I picked up the toy (ow, claws) — and then 30 minutes again tonight, after watching Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Amazing. Of course, this does raise one worrisome spectre: If he’s capable of training me when he’s just a kitten, to what sinister ends will he have bent me by the time he’s Motley’s age?