While details are still emerging, I think there are a few things we can be clear on: Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Sharron Angle didn't shoot Gabrielle Giffords. As violent as these figures' rhetoric has been, they weren't calling in a hit, and I don't think they actually intended anyone to die ( Read more... )

From the "not even trying" school of Craigslist car photography:

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In order of decreasing age:

• 1972 Saab 95: Sold, I have the money, I've sent the title. Months ago, actually. Now if I could just get the new owner to pick it up. Annoying because I sold it largely because I just didn't have time to deal with it anymore.
  
• 1988 VW Cabriolet Automatic: This was the $800 car I got as a stopgap for Dana after the Malibu ( Read more... )

I just got done listening to an On The Media show about the effects video games are having on our culture. I know a lot of you are rolling your eyes already, because media stories about this topic tend to focus on images of antisocial losers hammering away in dark basements. But this was really something else. Two quotes that really struck me:I ( Read more... )

Der Spiegel has a six-part article called "A Superpower In Decline" about the current economic and social crisis in the U.S. It's interesting to see a German angle on this, because Germans have their own peculiar conventional wisdom about economics. It's not necessarily more correct than ours (although their economy is doing rather better than ( Read more... )

I got a Barnes & Noble Nook (the black-and-white one) about a week ago, and I thought I'd post my observations about it.

Good stuff:

• The e-ink display is really lovely for text, and displays grayscale pictures well, too. It's extremely sharp with excellent contrast in just about any lighting situation where a normal book would be readable. There ( Read more... )

http://seattle.craigslist.org/tac/cto/2111565653.html

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Those of you grading papers this week will appreciate today's Wondermark:
http://wondermark.com/685/

Former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman now says the Republican Party should support gay marriage. Gee, thanks, Ken, for waiting until you no longer had any influence (and your career was not at risk) to say that. Your willingness to stick up for your principles only when it is entirely safe to do so is an inspiration to us all.

The NRA sent me a membership application with a letter that warned that Nancy Pelosi wants to take away everyone's guns. They don't get it, do they? By the time a bill like that made it through the Senate and Obama did one of his trademark compromises with the Republicans, it would have been retitled the Free Guns For Everyone Act and would ( Read more... )