Something That Will Never Happen with E-Books

I was riding the subway last night and reading Carson McCullers: A Life. A woman in the opposite seat made eye contact and smiled with a sort of blushing look, holding up her copy of The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter.

The Week in Food

The craft of butchering meat? It's older than you thought. A lot older (But archaeologists still haven't found the first barbecue grill).

I have to wonder, does Burger King own stock in pharma companies that make drugs for heart disease?

I like chocolate. I like bacon. And I like hamburgers. But this is just wrong.

Admit it, you've wondered about it. Here's the answer.

When you graduate from the Sausage Academy, is the diploma on pigskin?

The Spirit of the Times

I was reading Politics Daily this morning and noticed links to stories on a site called Newser (which I hadn't know of before). I go to Newser and notice they have a succinct motto at the top of their home page:

"Read Less. Know More."

Feelings I Have Had in My Life That Are Best Expressed in German

der Putzfimmel: a compulsion to clean.

die Tätevorfahrenenschuld: guilt about the actions of your ancestors.

der Futterneid: the suspicion that the food of the person at the next table is much better than yours.

die Reinheitsgeboteinhaltungangst: a worry that the beer you've been served wasn't brewed in compliance with the purity law of 1516.

der Trivialitätsfurcht: dread of something that isn't a big deal at all.

Quote of the Week

"Certiorari brief was submitted to the Supreme Court. Only application for the temporary stay was denied, and even that was denied without signatures of the Justices. We have now a situation, where the clerks run the Supreme Court, they issue releases, but there are no signatures of any Justices, so there is no evidence that the Justices ever read a word of these pleadings."

--Orly Taitz, after the Supreme Court rejected her appeal of a $20,000 fine imposed by U.S. District Court Judge Clay Land for wasting the Court's time with a "frivolous"* lawsuit alleging Barack Obama was not born in the United States.**

*The Court's word choice.

**Hopefully her crusade to convince us of Obama's illegitimacy is over and she can go back to helping Sarah Palin re-make the English language.

The Way We Live Now

If you thought American politics couldn't become any more of a farce:

"I think I would remember if I'd kidnapped something and — someone — and I don't remember and I absolutely deny kidnapping anyone ever."

It's the new "I did not have sex with that woman."

Bonus: the candidate who has had to utter those words is ahead in the polls.

Our Tax Dollars at Work

Those of us who thought the economic stimulus was ridiculously small--such as the outgoing chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers--should have been pleased at the news that the Obama Administration is being millions to help create IT jobs. The catch is, they'll be created in Asia.

From Information Week:

Despite President Obama's pledge to retain more hi-tech jobs in the U.S., a federal agency run by a hand-picked Obama appointee has launched a $36 million program to train workers, including 3,000 specialists in IT and related functions, in South Asia.

Also, in what I suppose is one of those trademark shrewd moves to head off critics who would say that Obama is showing favoritism to South Asia due to his fond memories of his Indonesian childhood, he's also using our tax dollars for a similar initiative in Armenia.