I wonder why, in the entire article on the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (which is probably going to result in mass plagues, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth), the author fails to mention the biggest contributing factor to this phenomenon: factory farming practices. I wrote a paper on this in law school awhile back, and it's a very ( Read more... )

Is it just me, or did tonight's Lost (with the spinning stone tablet thing) totally bite off the Myst aesthetic from back in the day?

A list of books I've read over the last two or so years, presented in no particular order because I have a horrible chronological memory:

Against The Day*
Absurdistan
A Short History of Nearly Everything***
Shakespeare: The World as Stage
The Ridiculous Race*
How I Became A Famous Novelist**
2,666**
The Savage Detectives
The Skating Rink
In The ( Read more... )

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Talking to a friend the other day about how awesome the high speed train between Paris and London is (and how I want to go back and visit both cities again ASAP), reminded me about how much I wished we had similar infrastructure in the U.S., and how ridiculous it is that we don't have it already. One of the popular objections to proposed high- ( Read more... )

One of the things I really hate is when the temperature and humidity combine to render the air a particular weight and consistentcy such that it is equivalent to the density of car exhaust, so that instead of rising or dispersing, the fumes merely mingle with the surrounding air and just hang there at eye level, like a fart in a shower.

A couple of weekends ago, I headed off to the San Juan islands with some friends for a week. We spent part of the time on Lopez Island, where my buddy Damon's parents have a place his dad designed and built, and the other part camping on Orcas Island. To get to the islands from Seattle, you drive or take a shuttle from SeaTac a couple hours north ( Read more... )

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