1) While driving home from the Jacksonville airport today, I saw two separate pickup trucks (not traveling together) sporting the same bumper sticker: a waving American flag covered with the words ( Read more... )

A beloved professor once taught me that no writing that is cute can ever be good. The Good Mayor starts out by telling us that it takes place in the year ----, in the town of Dot, which lies on the bank of the river Ampersand. Forty pages in we learn that, sweet Jesus, Dot's rival town down the road is called Umlaut. About thirty pages later ( Read more... )

I finally managed to install Windows 7 on this new laptop. (First post from new laptop! Woot!) I've watched a couple of the Windows 7 tutorials and have practiced using the Shake function and the like. Pretty nifty. I think I'll be a fan ( Read more... )

While I'm pretty sure most of you read the AV Club without my sending you there, I wanted those missing out to know that they released their lists of the best short story collections and the best books of the decade today.

I've only read three of these books: Freakonomics, The Blind Assassin, and The Time Traveler's Wife. I hated the Atwood ( Read more... )

"Are blood tests and physical exams required ( Read more... )

Okay, so this article doesn't suddenly say we shouldn't bother with health care reform or anything, but it does point out some areas in which the conventional wisdom is wrong:
NY Times article

(I'm trying to imagine an America in which we smoke more than the Germans, and I'm glad I don't live there.)

Okay, so I need a new laptop, like, bad, and thanks to leftover money from my NSF grant, I get one for free. Yea. (Well, free minus the amount of my tax dollars that go to support the NSF. Thanks for the laptop, hardworking Americans.) After all the troubles I've had in the past year, I swore I'd never get another Dell, but then somebody who knows ( Read more... )

As you know, I recently finished That Old Ace in the Hole, so I need something new to read. I'm moving soon, though, so I can't check a book out of the library. I need something I can take along with me to Florida and not return for several months. Therefore, I just raided the bookcase that holds my mom's collection from when she taught high ( Read more... )

Two nights ago I finished That Old Ace in the Hole by Annie Proulx, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Shipping News, which I have not (yet) read. I would give it four asterisks under OS's handy dandy rating system. I got to caring about the main character, who learns a lesson, but not in a Hammer of Morality way. I trust that the depictions ( Read more... )

Anyway, I am in need of some suggestions ( Read more... )