Happy Fourth of July and a note for scientists researching memory in rats

Pundita is up at this awful hour to prepare for a delightful family outing at the beach and then we hope to make it back in time for fireworks on the Washington National Mall.

In an effort to head off Not Born Yesterday, I am herewith announcing that I have temporarily suspended the Pundita Blogroll due to receiving hate mail from Rugby.

I had hoped that with the passage of time he'd forget I'd awarded a Pundita Prize to the Belmont Club blogger instead of Wretchard the Cat. But within 24 hours of posting a Pundita Prize category on the Blogroll and placing Belmont Club there, Rugby was on the warpath again.

This time he's turned quite venomous -- perhaps because his typing speed has picked up. He seems to have mastered using his nose, three paws and his tail. I will not inflict the missive on the reader because he's still not found the Spell Check key. But now Pundita is no longer just "human-centric." Now Pundita is a racist who is prejudiced against all mammalian beings except humans. Belmont Club is now not just a blogger with a puffy head. No, he's now plagiarizing the works of his devoted blind cat.

There is a way to blame all this on the Belmont Club blogger. If he wouldn't wander off the reservation and take pot shots at leftists, I could simply place him under the GWOT category. But I have a horror of some unsuspecting Japanese or Romanian Pundita reader, innocently in search of news about the war on terror, clicking onto Belmont Club while he's in the middle of shredding a kook such as Ward Churchill.

But there are other problems as well. Pundita has recalled that BCB was not the only person to be awarded a Pundita Prize. So now I've probably offended other bloggers by not fitting them under the category -- even though the prize for BCB was with regard to the 2005 Pundita Prize for Excellence in Journalism. This after an alert reader informed me that the Pulitzer Prize only applied to print journalism.

Well, I cannot put if off any longer. Time for the joyous ride to the beach.

Happy Fourth of July to everyone, and a special thanks to the US troops serving abroad. You are always in my thoughts and prayers.

Best regards to all,
Pundita