"Romney has a 20-point advantage among white voters."

"Obama is supported by 91% of black voters and 57% of other minority voters."

Subliminality.

Here 's something the Obama campaign did in an ad — displaying the word "felons" for 6 seconds on a graph labeled "Romney...

"Smoking meant a lot to her sometimes."

"She worked very hard and it had some ability to rest and relax her psychologically. She was a widow and she had no close relatives to ...

McSweeney's makes a comical list of "Suggested Buzzfeed Articles."

"Elvis Presley’s 42 Sweatiest Moments... The 100 Filthiest Bathrooms in Philadelphia... 11 Retired History Professors Being Stung by Wa...

What would it take for you to realize you had 80,000 bees in your house?

"... it wasn't long after that honey began to slowly drip from newly emerged cracks in the living room and kitchen ceilings, while ...

"I chose a pseudonym, Chris Marker, pronounceable in most languages, because I was very intent on traveling. No need to delve further."

The film director — whose 1962 short "La Jetée — was the basis of the 1995 movie "12 Monkeys" — died in Paris on Sunday at th...

David Brooks is boring.

I mean, he's bored. That is, he says it's all so boring and everyone's bored .

Racializing Romney.

The press is.

Torso time.

Bookcovers and the bathing suits that match them. "Each match discovered by hand." Via Metafilter . Also via Metafilter , and sin...

"Romney Photo Spurs Domestic Abuse Incident."

"Suspicious that his live-in girlfriend was planning an affair, a Tennessee man confronted the woman after spotting a photo of an unkno...

What standard of living should others feel moved to lift you up to? Question 1: What's your "social context"?

We saw in that NYT article about the "FUCK! I'm in my twenties" girl Emma Koenig that her mother had to do some analysis befo...

I just got email from Barack Obama with the subject line "So"....

Text: "Sometimes politics can seem very small./But the choice voters face in this election couldn't be bigger./Over the past two mo...

Her blog's "title begins with a common vulgar interjection" and her book "goes by the same name as the blog and concludes with the words 'I’m in My Twenties'..."

How the NYT refers to Emma Koenig's "FUCK! I'm in my twenties." The NYT article fusses (inanely) over "fuck." W...

"Increasing Taxes on the Wealthy Is Lowest Priority Issue, Even Among Obama Voters."

Gallup discovers .

"'So patently false' Obama removed Churchill bust from the White House."

Politico headline for an article relying on White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer to contradict something Charles Krauthammer wr...

"It wasn't very long ago they were trying to tell us that Romney was a bully.... Now he's a wimp?"

Rush Limbaugh riffed on the new Newsweek cover today: Calling Romney a wimp is aimed at suppressing the white blue-collar vote .  Blue-colla...

"[Angel] Ortiz and a generation of urban latchkey kids who spray-painted their initials all over Manhattan in the 1970s and '80s and landed in the city's street art scene" are getting old.

"Fortunately, there's no forced retirement in graffiti," and life goes on: For decades, Ortiz, 45, has been known on Manhattan...

The author of "Imagine" imagined some Bob Dylan quotes.

"The quotes in question either did not exist, were unintentional misquotations, or represented improper combinations of previously exis...

"Just one piece of general advice from a writer has been very useful to me. It was from Colette."

Said Georges Simenon: ... I remember I gave her two short stories and she returned them and I tried again and tried again. Finally she said...

Pro-Romney super PAC spends $7.2 million to air Romney-saving-the-Olympics ad.

Featuring Kristi Yamaguchi: "He faced a $400 million budget deficit and turned that around into a $100 million surplus."

Would you be prepared to survive in the event of a complete breakdown of modern civilization?"

"A man-made or natural global disaster could strand you for months, years or forever with no electricity, no water from the taps, no gr...

"Any time someone has looked like superwoman in the history of our sport they have later been found guilty of doping."

John Leonard, the executive director of the World Swimming Coaches Association, saying that Ye "looks like superwoman." Leonard re...

Because "law-school applications have fallen... prospective students have gained leverage" negotiating for more scholarship money.

The Wall Street Journal reports: Robert Rasmussen, dean of the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, said students have bec...

When Paul Ryan was 16.

From a New Yorker article written by Ryan Lizza: But the summer of 1986 brought a life-changing event. One night in August, he came home fro...

"Life is short, even for the non-aborted."

Something I just found myself saying (in the context of why I've only blogged about abortion and not written the book I almost have in m...

"It is a racist statement and this man doesn't realize that the Palestinian economy cannot reach its potential because there is an Israeli occupation."

"This man" = Mitt Romney. ADDED:  Word is that Romney wasn't just comparing Israel to the areas managed by the Palestinian Au...

"The Dark Knight Rises" "is a bold apologia for free-market capitalism..."

"... a graphic depiction of the tyranny and violence inherent in every radical leftist movement from the French Revolution to Occupy Wa...

"Voter ID laws could swing states."

An article at Politico: "Swing states are always much more likely to have these kinds of laws restricting voting,” said Wendy Weiser, d...

"Prized Olympic tickets entrusted to foreign delegations are being openly sold by touts on the streets of Britain..."

"The revelation came as a row raged over embarrassing scenes of banks of empty seating at many Games venues – including last night’s sw...

"Self-reliance — the new edgy lifestyle for the trendsetters among America’s youth?"

Glenn Reynolds asks in a NY Post column. In today’s culture of immediate reward, a work ethic centering on self-discipline and the ability t...

"At the urging of Valerie Jarrett, President Barack Obama canceled the operation to kill Osama bin Laden on three separate occasions..."

"before finally approving the May 2, 2011 Navy SEAL mission, according to an explosive new book scheduled for release August 21.......

Algebra class is hard — so should we stop requiring it?

That's what polisci prof Andrew Hacker argues in a NYT op-ed: Algebra is an onerous stumbling block for all kinds of students: disadvant...

"NBC tape delay coverage is like the airlines..."

"... its interest is in giving you the least satisfactory service you will still come back for."

Romney: “It is a deeply moving experience to be in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel.”

That was a powerful statement, Jennifer Rubin writes , since the Obama administration has "repeatedly put out documents suggesting that...

"Mrs. Helen Althouse, the well-known mysterious Attica sleeper..."

"... had a narrow escaped from death from poisoning this week." Two men visited Mrs. Althouse Thursday evening, and it is said one...

"As a cultural ideal, women’s gymnastics is kind of weird."

Writes Robert Stacy McCain. [I]’s not a sport for grown-ups. Pubescent girls can perform at levels that no mature woman can hope to match, a...

It's not easy to be this bad.

An 11-year-old girl sings what some consider the worst version of the National Anthem ever (to an audience of 22,000). Here 's the Chri...

6 highlights from Chris Wallace's great interview with Justice Scalia.

From the transcript of this morning's Fox News Sunday (and video ). 1. Obamacare. Since Scalia is on the show to promote his new book ...

At the Willow Café...

... I've got nothing to say.

"God bless you.”/“Here comes the next president!”/“He is for Israel!”

Romney at Jerusalem's Western Wall.

"The average car on the road is 11 years old, the highest figure ever recorded."

"[B]esides the economic reasons to hang onto cars longer... today’s drivers are more comfortable driving cars into the ground because t...

"Five-hundred gallons of dye bought with nearly $30,000 in taxpayers' money has turned the 267-acre Lake Delton to a tranquil, tourist-attracting aqua-blue..."

"'I think the proof is in the pudding if you look at the lake. You had seen it as pea soup and green, and if you look at it today, ...

Michael Phelps swam the first swim "like it was the last."

"Like he has swum it one too many times. Like he was swimming out of obligation, rather than inspiration...."

"A few jurisdictions have laws against 'attractiveness discrimination.'"

"Try to guess which ones, then click on the link to see if you’re right."

"Next time someone is wasting your life with their voice, any look from this rainbow of options ranging from passive-aggressive..."

"... to aggressive-aggressive will help ward them off. Some might call you insensitive or rude, but to those haters, just shoot any oth...

Liking and hating Obama.

Here are 2 articles on the front page of washingtonpost.com right now: 1. "Romney’s problem? Americans don’t like him as much as Obama,...

"John Kerry was made to look effete in 2004 by Republican mockery of his windsurfing, his Turnbull & Asser shirts and his French fluency."

"Now Democrats have a chance to do something similar to Romney, with his Swiss bank account, his Grand Cayman and Bermuda tax havens, h...

"I really like about Barack that he’s obviously kindling something in me — my voice to myself."

"He encourages it and w/ o knowing what it says, leaves room for it.… On Sunday I woke up, waiting for Barack to wake, writing a bit mo...

Remnants of protest.

The view from the top of State Street at noon yesterday. The "Solidarity Singers" were there, as they are now only once a week. I...

At the Cloud Café...

... you can float along all day.

"O HAI Ann Althouse!"

"Now you know how to greet people in Lolspeak." On Flickr, just now, where they keep changing the "language" they use fo...

"For those who insist they've located the least essential, or least sport-y Olympic discipline..."

"... may I present — via Kon Ichikawa's essential 1965 documentary Tokyo Olympiad — 50 kilometer Olympic race-walking?" Wait! ...

"The most leftie opening ceremony I have ever seen - more than Beijing, the capital of a communist state! Welfare tribute next?"

A member of Parliament tweets.

Renting... at $60,000 a month.

"Will they get any takers? Especially when the undulating window design by the starchitect Frank Gehry lets you see and be seen by your...

"There are no boundaries. There are no corrals."

A fascinating Bill Cunningham video this week.

Paddleboard.

Want one? It's not that often that I do something new, but I did something new yesterday: stand-up paddleboarding. I managed to stand up...

"Michelle Obama remained true to her patriotic fashion theme today in a dazzling white top and skirt for this evening's events in London."

So begins the Daily Mail: The U.S. First Lady, who has stuck to a palette of red, white and blue since she arrived in the city this morning,...

"Unfathomably, the programme notes for the Harry Potter author, who read from the opening of Peter Pan, declared her to be 'a great philanthropist, praised by the Government as a tax angel – one of the few who willingly pays her tax bill.'"

From the long, photo-filled Daily Mail article about last night's opening ceremony for the London Olympics. Unfathomably? Oh, come on....

"Look, if you colonists have been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own."

I didn't write this on my own. In fact, I didn't write it at all. Meade wrote this: Lord North: Look, if you colonists have been su...

Today at the Orpheum.

The State Street landmark has gone dark. One of 2 building permit signs in the window says: "Remove all components of Stage Door theate...

"Ann changed her Religious Views."

The absurdity of Facebook:

Brian Lamb asks Justice Scalia why he's "so sensitive."

Why are you judges so sensitive about what they say when they have life tenure? Scalia says everything he has to say is in the opinions, and...

"RAT is an anagram of ART. Do you think that inspired them, perhaps subconsciously?"

Asks Dr Weevil. "A weevil is any beetle from the Curculionoidea superfamily. They are usually small, less than 6 millimetres... and he...