"It's mercy, compassion and forgiveness I lack... not rationality."

What movie are we watching?

Product niche.

I think if more women were involved in deciding what products to design, what I've been looking for would already exist. I want a very s...

Not so big anymore.

For the first time since before the Civil War, Milwaukee is not one of the twenty largest cities in the U.S. They seem pretty upset about i...

"With every passing hour, it becomes clearer and clearer that nothing is going to happen."

The news of no news.

A door with attitude.

This is the door of a shop here in Madison: Reactions?

"#Through the nose, #High voice, #Nose broken early in youth to account for difficulty."

Brando's notes on the "Godfather" script -- along with other personal effects up for auction -- pictured here . And here '...

"Get Out, You Damned One."

That's the title of Saddam's novel, banned, then bootlegged in Jordan, where "a lot of people still like him, and he still com...

Mexico? Exactly how...

... do you make a mistake like this ? "Memín Pinguín is a character like Speedy González, created in the 1940's," the spokesm...

"A monument to a society that has turned its back on any notion of cultural openness."

Criticism of the new World Trade Center Freedom Tower. The most radical design change is the creation of the base, which will house the bui...

And then there's the "adrenosexual" man.

Replacing the metrosexual.

The Leo Burnett Man Study.

The Leo Burnett ad agency recently released a study , based on interviews with over 2,000 men in 13 countries, about attitudes about mascul...

"What do actresses see in their scruffy men?"

The International Herald Tribune inquires : The once glamorous Hollywood of Cary Grant and Steve McQueen has been taken over by greasy-haire...

Theme of the day detected.

Quite by accident, today's posts seem thematically linked. Something about expressing masculinity.

"We really slobbered over the old witch."

That was Richard Nixon's statement after meeting Indira Gandhi in 1971 -- according to recently released documents . And the charming He...

"Egyptians ate lettuce to boost sex drive."

That's what it says here . Something to do with the god Min, who is "invariably depicted with a large, erect" -- and probably ...

Remember the men's movement?

With the drumming circles and everything? The Boston Globe seeks out the present-day remnants (via A&L Daily ): So what happened to [Ro...

Yelling in a quiet neighborhood.

I live in a very quiet neighborhood. It's summertime and there are lots of windows open. Every once in a while I hear a guy yell. Just: ...

"I can get pretty worked up being a Lisa Simpson in the Bart Simpson world of the SEC."

Says Christine Hurt -- picking up the gauntlet thrown down by Prawfsblawg .

Stagger Lee shot Billy Lyons over a brand new Stetson Hat.

And now Bono is suing Lola Cashman over an old Stetson hat. ( Stagger Lee link. )

On sending your sons.

Here 's a great Christopher Hitchens piece saying something that needs to be said: parents don't send their sons to war. Those who ...

"I have been looking for some nice triangles."

Awesome.

Do you ever get nostalgic for the early days of your blog?

Remember how it felt back then? So obscure... and illicit!

"She wears her lakes like a diamond tiara/Her necklace is known as the mighty Yahara/Around her the Beltline is draped like a garland..."

"...And brings in commuters from way past McFarland." Should "Wonderful Madison" be the official Madison song? Sweet mo...

"The Comeback."

Are you watching "The Comeback" -- the HBO comedy series that stars Lisa Kudrow? I just discovered it on HBO On Demand yesterday ...

Hollywood comes to Madison.

I hear: "The Last Kiss" starring Scrubs actor Zach Braff is scheduled to begin filming in Madison tomorrow.... "The Last Kis...

A nominee to satisfy business and social conservatives.

Stephen Bainbridge covers a subscribers-only article in the Wall Street Journal that I hadn't been able to get to myself. The subject i...

Music question.

Dialogue: CHRIS: If you could go back in time either to the 50s or the 60s and you could bring a CD of songs from the 90s -- burn a CD... M...

"Seldom has the capital been so spoiling for a fight."

Here's the NYT front-page piece on the (non)retirement of Chief Justice Rehnquist. You just know everyone had articles like this ready ...

Don't comp dessert! Comp the wine!

Nina has the scoop on last night's dinner at the Macaroni Grill, where they screwed up seating us at different tables, leaving me to dra...

"The media lived on borrowed time for a long time."

Adam Liptak has this piece in the NYT about the decline of the notion that mainstream journalists are entitled to special First Amendment p...

Early morning radio.

I'll be on Wisconsin Public Radio (the "Ideas Network") at 8, talking about the "legacy of Chief Justice Rehnquist"...

Putting aside the "brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular."

(Also posted on the SCOTUSblog Ten Commandments discussion .) In Van Orden, Justice Breyer quotes Justice Goldberg: [U]ntutored devotion to...

"If you've read much about serial killers..."

I have never seen anything more horrific on television than the 9/11 attacks. The shocking, spectacular images of fire and collapse are deep...

Why Justice O'Connor opposed both Ten Commandments displays.

As described in the previous post , in Van Orden (the Texas Ten Commandments monument case), Justice Breyer purported to adopt the approach...

It's Breyer and not O'Connor determining the outcome in the Ten Commandments monument case.

All eyes turn to Justice Breyer, who voted with the Chief Justice and Justices Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas , to produce a victory for the s...

The first Ten Commandments decision.

CNN reports: The 5-4 decision, first of two seeking to mediate the conflict over religion's place in public life, took a case-by-case ap...

"Reality now is very strange."

So Iraqis are reading books. Intellectuals and writers seem particularly disoriented in the new Iraq. Many were alive in the decades before ...

The dreaded Justice Kennedy.

Here 's a front-page NYT piece on Justice Kennedy, whose nomination to the Court was sold to conservatives as "Bork without the bea...

If Justice O'Connor retires, must her successor be a woman?

"Sources report Rehnquist is not ready to resign and that O'Connor is readying the way for a return to Arizona with her invalid hus...

Fussing over symbols.

Here 's the SCOTUSblog discussion group dedicated to McCreary, the Ten Commandments case that will be announced very soon. I'll be p...

"Some believe the lost souls try to drag living beings into their spiritual limbo land."

Fear of the haunted beach , after the tsunami.

"I started my band for all the right reasons, and we did what we did for all the right reasons, and somewhere along the way it got sort of taken away."

So says Billy Corgan , as he announces Smashing Pumpkins is regrouping. Interestingly, he's selected the release date for his solo album...

"Teaching math in a neutral manner is not possible."

Because we teachers are compelled to patronize you students.

Paris.

Today, I sent my older son off to Paris. He's studying law, and Cornell Law School runs a five-week program there. I've been to Pari...

Chief Justice Luttig?

The Chicago Tribune's Jan Crawford Greenburg thinks so , and seems to have good access to inside source. As a judge, Luttig is widely co...

"A female interrogator took an unusual approach to wear down a detainee, reading a Harry Potter book aloud for hours."

Such are the conditions at Gitmo . The detainee, it must be noted, had to endure significant stress to his upper extremities as he needed to...

"There's something very refreshing about her cynical sexual frankness."

The Washingtonienne's novel/memoir is out. Here 's the NYT review -- kind of a good review: What is surprising about the Washingtoni...

Is foie gras evil?

Ever since I saw the movie " Mondo Cane ," back in the 1960s, I've believed the methods used to make foie gras were truly evil...

A very conservative, pro-Kelo voice.

John Derbyshire on Kelo: As conservatives we are of course all watchful for, and suspicious of, overweening state power. Governments do some...

What I hope the Supreme Court will do in the Ten Commandments case.

The AP's Gina Holland writes : The Supreme Court ends its work Monday with the highest of drama: an anticipated retirement, a ruling on ...

''This is only the second show that's a comedy about the South -- this and 'Andy Griffith' -- that doesn't make fun of Southerners."

Who watches "King of the Hill"? According to this NYT piece : "men between the ages of 18 and 49, and almost a quarter of tho...

"Jane, you ignorant slut."

I guess Shana Alexander must have known all along that line would appear in her obituary .

Why can't I watch "The Simpsons"?

Every time somebody quotes "The Simpsons" -- like in the comments to this post -- I'm always terribly impressed. How smart a...

"Would a man do this to another man?"

Do what?

The death of a local playwright.

The Wisconsin State Journal reports : Joel Gersmann, 62, artistic director of Broom Street Theater since 1969 and one of Madison's most ...

Today's word challenge.

I'm looking at my old copy of "The Book of Lists," which has a list of the "10 Most Beautiful Words in the English Langua...

"Daddy."

Is there something wrong with you if you call your father "Daddy"? Jeremy posits that there is. Here's the comment I put over...

An invitation to Moyers and Watt, accepted by one. Which one?

Bill Moyers embarrassed himself by slurring from former Secretary of the Interior James Watt. Patricia Nelson Limerick describes the inciden...

Did you hear the one about the lower-tier law school appointments committee that rejected a candidate out of hand for clerking for Justice Thomas?

Gordon Smith writes about the politics (and religion) of law school hiring.

''Matt, Matt, you don't even -- you're glib. You don't even know what Ritalin is."

Did you hear the Matt Lauer "Today Show" interview with Tom Cruise today? I happened to catch it on MSNBC radio this afternoon. C...

Screaming in the theater.

At a horror film, do people in the audience scream? Usually not, right? Today, I screamed three times -- out loud -- seeing "Land of th...

The tobacco warehouses.

The graffiti'd walls of the tobacco warehouses in Madison: Inside: beautiful loft apartments, in the final stages of preparation. Presum...

The politics of the zombie.

Manohla Dargis writes about "Land of the Dead": With each of Mr. Romero's zombie movies, the walking dead have grown progress...

"What exactly goes on in the Hoegaarden?"

Just one of the questions Oscar has about Amsterdam.

The two novelists dialogue.

Which one did you side with? UPDATE: Another round of two novelists.

It's a trap!

Fascinating! So Karl Rove really is a genius.

The South Bronx becomes So Bro.

I guess this front-page NYT article about how the South Bronx -- now So Bro -- is the hip new place will change the whole dynamic. Quick ev...

Has the Court "erased the Public Use Clause from our Constitution"?

That's what Justice Thomas wrote in dissent in Kelo v. City of New London, yesterday's Supreme Court Takings Clause case. Much of t...