The Russians are apparently white-washing their history. Of course, I’m saying this in a nation where the #1 radio talk show host had a hissy fit because someone suggested that the European settlers brought diseases that inadvertently wiped out the Native Americans. But the Gulag is something in modern memory with living survivors. Putin and his cronies are trying to erase a holocaust.
If you haven’t read Anne Applebaum’s Gulag or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, do so. While the memory is still here. And remember that little blonde girl who died of loneliness in a Gulag nursery. Remember all of them.
There are a number of things I will miss about Texas: the cheap real estate; the warm spring; the way random strangers will, on little urging, tell you their life story.
One of the things I will not miss is cedar pollen. Good Lord. I feel like I’ve been over by a truck full of Obama supporters. My face feels like I was punched in the nose by the blob. I’m lying on the floor of my daughter’s room next to air purifier, hoping I can breath in a few hours. I don’t dare drive to Austin today — I might run off the road just to end the suffering.
Every place has its pollen. I used to spend every fall in Minnesota sneezing my brains out. But this is the worst I’ve encountered.
Lap dancing “is not sexually stimulating”, the chairman of the Lap Dancing Association told a parliamentary committee today.
Simon Warr made the claim, which was greeted with scepticism by MPs, while he was giving evidence to the Commons culture committee as part of an inquiry into the operation of the Licensing Act.
The government is under pressure to change the act so that lap dancing clubs have to be licensed as sex encounter establishments.
At the moment, they are licensed in the same way as pubs and clubs, which has led to complaints from councils who believe that they do not have the power to stop clubs being opened in their areas.
See, this is why the British Parliament is so much more entertaining than our Congress. Even if our Congress did hear testimony from the President of the Lap Dancing Association (really?), it wouldn’t be nearly as funny:
[Tory MP] Davies responded with even more astonishment.
“So if I did a straw poll of all the customers who came out a lap dancing club and said ‘Did you find that in any way sexually stimulating?’ I would find a big resounding fat zero? On that basis you would have a lot of dissatisfied customers.”
Here’s something I’ve grown awfully sick of: endless book titles. It seems that no book these days can be published without a paragraph length subtitle. For example, Leviathan on the Right wasn’t long enough, so it got the subtitle How Big Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution. The Dark Side wasn’t enough, so we got The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals. Ron Paul is seemingly the only man who can avoid this. His book has the comparatively simple and concise title of the The Revolution: A Manifesto.
But Dick Morris’ latest ignorant screed has to take the cake. Here’s the title: Fleeced: How Barack Obama, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the Do-Nothing Congress, Companies That Help Iran, and Washington Lobbyists for Foreign Governments Are Scamming Us … and What to Do About It. I’m tired just reading that epistemological and grammatical nightmare.
I love maps. I can spend hours pouring over them. I could spend days taking sporcle’s geography quizzes. Here is a map of all American streets. Identify the cities.
It’s always flattering/scary when other people link to me. Today, I got a nice link from my friend Amanda, who runs a cool astronomy blog and is a skilled volleyball player. Another inbound link comes from Nicole, a graduate student from my old UVa stomping grounds who recently counter-protested the Westboro Church. Counting myself, that’s at least three readers.
Keep in mind. I’m not saying that my very presence creates an aura that causes sports teams to triumph. I will simply put out the facts and let you be the judge.
In 1990, I moved to Minnesota for college. In 1991, the Twins went worst to first and won the World Series. That same year, the Minnesota North Stars made the Stanley Cup final.
In 1994, I moved back to Atlanta. In 1995, the Atlanta Braves won the World Series.
In 1995, I moved to Charlottesville for grad school. That year, only a few hundred yards from my apartment, UVa beat Florida State for the first time and took the ACC title. They would be a second-tier power for the entire time I was there.
In 2001, I moved to Baltimore. As I accepted the job, the Baltimore Ravens won the superbowl. The next year, the University of Maryland won the NCAA Basketball Championship.
In 2004, I moved to Austin. That year, the Longhorns won the Rose Bowl. The next year, they won the BCS championship.
In 2005, I moved to New Braunfels, not far outside of San Antonio. The Spurs would win two of the next three NBA Championships.
Earlier this year, I accepted a job in Penn State. Already, the Phillies have won the World Series for the first time in 28 years. And Penn State today just clinched the Big Ten title and will go to the Rose Bowl for the first time since 1994.
So is it all just a coincidence? Or do I rock? You be the judge.
You know, I understand that apologies are difficult. But apologizing for institutionalized racism is pretty straight-forward, no? No excuse making necessary, right?
I didn’t take internet plagiarism seriously until it happened to me. So good on Cracked for zealously slamming the thieves. I don’t know what it is about the internet that people think they can just steal content. I mean, a link takes two seconds to post.
I have to agree with this. Due to our financials, it’s going to be a very cheap Xmas this year. But we’ll get a lot of time to spend with friends and family. I’ll take that trade.