Well, I've narrowed it down to three topics to choose from for my masters thesis ( Read more... )

A little slow in posting for a bunch of reasons: first, Laurie was here for a week around Thanksgiving... always a good thing. :) We went to Cologne again and had real steak and soft pretzels... no, not together. Note for Philadelphians: yes, the street vendor pretzels there are based on the same recipe -- but the originals are fresh out of the ( Read more... )

While under ordinary circumstances I would favor a government split across parties, the R's have had it all their way for 6 years. I wouldn't mind a couple of years of straight Dem control to aid in the rollback of the most egregious excesses before sharing power again ( Read more... )

By now most of you know that the Republican National Congressional Committee has been running an election eve dirty-tricks campaign to get voters irritated at Democratic candidates across the country, including the NH-02 candidate Paul Hodes. Let's look at some details.

• The NRCC admits to being the source of these calls.
• The calls cover 20 races ( Read more... )

Click for a larger version.

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The point of terrorism is, as the name suggests, to terrorize. Not simply to kill and destroy, but to frighten the broader population. It puzzles me why the RNC has found common cause with terrorists in their new ad campaign...

Source. The ad in question.

I remember seeing, years back, a poster with this description of "Cricket Explained for Foreigners" on it, and someone from Scotland telling me that yes, it's pretty accurate... finally ran across it again today, and so here it is. I'm sure it'll clear the whole confusing game up.

You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that ( Read more... )

Amsterdam doesn't have weather. It has climate.

The five-day forecast:

HighLow
Today:6057Cloudy, chance of rain
Tomorrow:6057Cloudy, chance of rain
Friday:6057Cloudy
Saturday:6259Cloudy, chance of rain
Sunday:6055Cloudy

I've always wanted a library in my house. Cozy little room, lots and lots of books, dark wood, comfortable chairs, maybe a fireplace.

Come to think of it, it should look something like this:


( Read more... )

I haven't seen a post that puts this stuff in perspective any better than this one from The Carpetbagger Report -- so I'm stealing it whole cloth:

New York magazine has a great feature story in its new issue on Stephen Colbert and his bombastic, over-the-top, O'Reilly-like on-air character. New York's Adam Sternbergh raised an interesting point I ( Read more... )