Have I talked about Dr. Bronner’s here before? My searches say not, but I remember expounding upon it recently–although it might have been at my poker game. If you don’t know Dr. Bronner’s, I’m not even sure where to start trying to explain it. The short version is this: my shower contains a bottle of liquid peppermint soapIt’s easy to… Read more →
Year: 2008
Good idea, let’s lower the bar.
And now, from the “dumbest thing I’ve read today” file: Bournemouth Council, which has the Latin motto Pulchritudo et Salubritas – beauty and health – has listed 19 terms it no longer considers acceptable for use. They include ad hoc, bona fide, status quo, vice versa and even via. Its list of alternatives includes ‘for this special purpose’, in place… Read more →
This might be a naive question, but…
You know all the noise from the right about Obama’s plan to make US income tax more progressive? (Which, sanity forces me to note, amounts to “return them to Clinton era levels”.) In the midst of all the arguments about who should be paying what share of the costs, why is there no big loud discussion about corporate tax rates?… Read more →
ELITE plan for Americans
Well, I guess that program turned out to be a waste of tax dollars. Hard to get all broken up about it, though, considering. Read more →
Good Thing I Have A Supply Laid In
The news appears to be disturbing… Whisky-loving Maritimers face a crisis of the spirit High global demand for single-malt Scotch puts Nova Scotia at risk of running out of key brands, draining the rest of the East Coast dry HALIFAX — The province may be named for Scotland, but that’s not enough to bump Nova Scotia up the queue as… Read more →
Adding Some Character
When I finally gave in to Jobs and switched from my series of non-Apple mp3 players to the iPod I wanted to give mine some character. Ironically, one of the primary reasons I switched was all the third-party stuff that was available for the iPod, so it was easy to start looking into ways to “trick it out”. My first… Read more →
Five For Friday
And now, an unthemed mix of music for a Friday. We’ll start off with a selection from the typically great new Oysterband album. This probably isn’t “the single” for most people, but since I’m getting quite comfortable in my self-selected role of aging and cranky progressive type, it appeals. I saw this live earlier this year…on a cannonball run from… Read more →
Aside
I’m glad I stayed up to hear Obama’s speech. I do have one unresolved question for California at this point: what the hell is up with Proposition H8? California? Hello? You’re letting me down over there.
Aside
I believe I just heard around 52% of Americans and THE ENTIRE REST OF THE WORLD breath a huge sigh of relief.
President Obama
I am now drinking Macallan as old as I am, and raising a toast to President Obama. Damn it feels nice to say that. In a few minutes I will begin entertaining myself by imagining the Red State heads exploding if Obama came out to make his acceptance speech to the strains of Power To The People, or something similar.… Read more →
Aside
You may also remember my pleasant surprise at how much I enjoyed Titan’s first collection of Nemi strips. I’ve been reading the strips online fairly religiously since. The second collection of strips also showed up today, and I’m quite looking forward to going through it to see which, if any, of the strips collected in this volume will be new to me. Apparently the ones in Metro are a sanitized subset of what’s in the collections. There’s a preview of 24 strips from the collection (use the cursor keys to navigate the set) at Titan’s site.
Aside
You may recall me marvelling at some of the images from Berni Wrightson’s Frankenstein portfolio. Well, today I picked up Dark Horse’s new big, beautiful hardcover edition of Frankenstein that’s lavishly illustrated with Wrightson’s images. It is a thing of beauty, and a steal at a $30 retail. There’s a preview online that gives you a sense of both the illustrations and the text design/layout.
Web Crack For Intellectuals
Wikipedia is one of the best things humanity has yet invented for allowing us to use up any extra time we have hanging around. As an added bonus, this time comes with a putative “educational value” benefit, which makes it easy to justify the time and avoid guilt over it. One example of how this might happen: you could go… Read more →
Sf Writers Say Smart Things: Sterling Again
“But, although we’re very good at giving ourselves things to buy, we’re not very good at understanding ourselves. We don’t really know what we want. And that’s really a cultural vaccuum there–it’s kind of a lack. And it’s becoming sinister.” —Bruce Sterling The most stinging part of this observation is that the idea that self-knowledge is a key part of… Read more →
A Tuesday Evening Gallimaufry
You know the drill: lots of links, less commentary than usual. I plead work. Does the idea that Sesame Street might need a warning label fire up some of that good old cognitive dissonance for you? Well, apparently there is one on the recently released early episodes. And some of the parents they showed it to were shocked. The old… Read more →
