Joey & Zeus go swimming... on the last day of November.

2 dogs, but only one human. All the videography — handheld — and throwing of things are done by Meade.

The hippie commune where "birth control was frowned upon, and abortions were prohibited; childbearing was seen as a natural, beautiful and wholly spiritual undertaking for a woman."

The Farm... it's still around. I was amazed to see that article in The Daily Mail (in the news because there's a new documentary mov...

At the Kong Kafé...

... what are you sucking at? (Need a Kong? Here ! Need anything else? Here's the outstanding and mild Althouse portal .)

"It is a funny time to be Ted Cruz, a Tea Party hero and 41-year-old Cuban-American up-and-comer."

"He... has come to Washington only to find his party in the dumps, demoralized and groping for answers. He is a rising star in a firmam...

Carrie Underwood as...

... Maria in "The Sound of Music."

"Offing a mustache is more complicated than you thought."

And... Aaron Rodgers , Movember is over .

At the Wet Dog Café...

... waiting for Meade to show up with a towel.

The dominant twin.

What must this do to your mind, long term, going through this dramatic experience?

"The Middleton chapter of Gilda's Club is changing its name to Cancer Support Community Southwest Wisconsin."

"Officials said one reason is because some people might not know who Radner was.... There are 56 chapters around the world. Twenty are ...

"If you can dream it, you can achieve it."

"Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude." Etc. etc.

The illusion that emotion is expressed through the face.

"When you and I talk to each other and we look at each other, we're really looking at each other's faces. That's where our ...

"Back in 1984, Congress gave authorities the power to let people out of federal prison early, in extraordinary circumstances..."

"... like if inmates were gravely ill or dying. But a new report says the Federal Bureau of Prisons blocks all but a few inmates from t...

The erosion of the Elmo brand.

The Daily News has a story about Charla Nash, the woman whose face and hands were ripped off by a chimpanzee back in 2009. She just settled...

The super-expensive Starbucks coffee from Costa Rica called "Geisha."

"We have loyal reserve customers who are interested in any opportunity to try something as rare and exquisite as the Geisha varietal,...

"Don't waste time worrying about growing old."

"Many experts described later life as embodying a serenity, a 'lightness of being,' a sense of calm and easiness in daily life ...

"An Egyptian court convicted in absentia Wednesday seven Egyptian Coptic Christians and a Florida-based American pastor..."

"... sentencing them to death on charges linked to an anti-Islam film that had sparked riots in parts of the Muslim world." It...

Federal court gives preliminary injunction to company with religious objection to HHS contraception mandate.

CNSnews reports.

What sort of man walks the streets of Madison with a camera strapped to his head?

In case you want a camera strapped to your head: here 's the GoPro. ADDED: Gift ideas: Althouse's blue suede shoes ; Althouse's ...

At the Under-the-Table Café...

... I can hang out longer than you.

"In the realm of religious faith, and in that of political belief, sharp differences arise."

"In both fields the tenets of one man may seem the rankest error to his neighbor. To persuade others to his own point of view, the plea...

"The FP Top 100 Global Thinkers."

Foreign Policy assembles the usual and unusual suspects. Obama — the "brainy 44th president" and "huge basketball fan" ...

How many weasels does it take to make a quorum?

And "where do city politicians fleebag when they want to hold up legislative decision-making by preventing quorum? Fitchburg?" Pr...

"Fight over Susan Rice holds political risks for White House."

So say Anne Gearan and Steven Mufson , writing in the Washington Post, prompting me to think the opposite . I say we're being played by ...

"Breasts."

One of the titles on the NYT "100 Notable Books of 2012." Obviously, this is a good source for gift ideas. (And here 's that A...

"Running too fast, too far and for too many years may speed one's progress toward the finish line of life."

Why the hurry?

"The Shame of the Universities."

An alternate title that would work for 2 recently published books, according Michael Barone . (Both are books I've blogged about before:...

Gift suggestion.

This may seem ordinary and overpriced, but it is fantastic. If you know someone who likes to wear fingernail polish but has trouble keeping...

"Hot Gift Is a Tablet, but Which to Buy?"

David Pogue examines the options. Seems like the Kindle Paperwhite is best for someone who mainly wants to read books. For a color device t...

"What else will these thousands of students who have been discouraged from attending law school do?"

"Where will they find a more fulfilling career? They’re not all going to be doctors or investment bankers, nor should they. Looking pur...

"The autistic worker... has an unusually wide variation in his or her skills, with higher highs and lower lows."

"Yet today... it is increasingly a worker’s greatest skill, not his average skill level, that matters. As capitalism has grown more ad...

"If the Senators have evidence that the terrorist detainee process has been abused to the detriment of American citizens..."

"... perhaps they could provide some examples. On the available evidence, the safeguards in place have protected both U.S. liberties an...

When the god-dog Zeus fetches... it's cosmic.

The most astounding commenter in the universe, Chip Ahoy, got inspired in yesterday's Lookout Café: It's known scientifically by k-...

2 views on taking away the mortgage interest deduction.

From a WaPo article on the supposedly real possibility that $100-billion-a-year item with make it into the fiscal cliff deal. 1. Edward Kle...

When a man agrees to be his ex-girlfriend's sperm donor...

... with a physician as intermediary and thereby avoids the obligation of paying child support, should he succeed if, later, he asks a court...

At the Lookout Café...

... keep watch.

"23 songs that use fruit for sexual metaphor."

Before looking , guess which fruit wins: Pick one. Peach Cherry Lemon Banana Kiwi Pineapple    pollcode.com free polls  

"Madison... through our weird college-tinted glasses..."

A cool depiction by Daniel Fleming : ( Enlarge .)

EBay thwarts Glenn Beck's satirical artwork.

"Obama in Pee Pee" violated a viewpoint-neutral policy: Your listing contain [sic] the bodily fluid of urine. We do not allow bodi...

Gift idea.

Story Cubes are fun and aesthetically pleasing.

"Even though it’s my job to be an actor, I have given my life to God."

"I am very comfortable and firm in that, but I still have to be on this show. It’s the No. 1 comedy, but it’s very inappropriate and th...

Chris Larson upsets Jon Erpenbach to become the Wisconsin Senate minority leader.

This is very intra-Wisconsin, but you may have seen Instapundit's item " DEMOCRATIC WHITE MALE SENATORS CONSPIRE to block a black...

Suing the psychotherapists who offered to cure homosexuality.

The claim is consumer fraud. The former clients said they were emotionally scarred by false promises of inner transformation and humiliating...

"Students told to disavow 'American-ness, maleness, whiteness, heterosexuality.'"

Asserts a headline at The College Fix that's getting a lot of attention right now. See Memeorandum and Instapundit . But the text, eve...

"Jogging with Zeus on Picnic Point."

Yesterday, at moonrise, dog, man, and new GoPro camera get a workout. If you hear music, it's the UW Marching Band.

In one hospital, over a period of 14 hours, 19 boys — and no girls — were born.

It's in the news as if it's amazing, but of course it's no more unusual than any other combination of boys and girls born anywh...

"Jake from ‘Two and a Half Men’ means nothing. He is a nonexistent character."

"If you watch ‘Two and a Half Men,’ please stop watching ‘Two and a Half Men.’ I’m on ‘Two and a Half Men’ and I don’t want to be on it...

Lindsey Graham "more concerned than I was before" about Susan Rice.

And he "wouldn’t vote for anybody being nominated out of the Benghazi debacle until I had answers about what happened that I don’t have...

The most popular Republican in the country.

Chris Christie.

The return of Martha Coakley.

"Coakley is still scarred from her 2010 Senate defeat, and many Democrats shudder at the thought of her running again."

"The whole time I thought he sounded like Pedro/Pablo from 'Napoleon Dynamite.'"

One comment from a community college student who was pranked, along with the rest of his  Speech 101 class by classmate Jose Barrientos, who...

Seen on the internet.

Grabbed this morning from a major news website : I just wanted you to know what's out there. I'm not saying be afraid, be very afrai...

"Intrade Closes To U.S. Bettors, Bowing To Pressure From Regulators."

Legal hassles thwart a guilty pleasure. “It is against the law to solicit U.S. persons to buy and sell commodity options, even if they are c...

"In recruiting women over 40 years of age, companies are finding young women who will misrepresent their true age on application forms."

"Legendary jukujo performer Mariko Kawano was one of the first, apparently claiming to be 34 when in fact she was really three years y...

Recycling your turkey-frying oil in Madison, Wisconsin for the greater good of America and the world.

A City of Madison news release: "We know that there are many people who have lots of oil left over after frying their Thanksgiving turk...

"'Black dog' is a powerfully expressive metaphor" for depression "that appears to require no explanation."

"The combination of ‘blackness’ with the negative connotations of ‘dog’, noun and verb, seems an eminently apt description of depressio...

"Time honors Sandra Fluke as 'Person of the Year' finalist."

That's the Breitbart headline for an item that begins "Just when you think Time magazine can’t make any more of a mockery of itse...

If DOMA is unconstitutional, what kind of past employee benefits will need to be paid?

Don't assume the effect of a new decision will be only prospective. Consider this report of a ruling by the Judicial Council of the Nin...

At the Black Dog Café...

... come in and dry off.

"Often times, there's not a distinction between asking a political question in the official office and the campaign office."

"All those things are things that need to be coordinated. There's nothing wrong with that."

"The senior employee knows that one of the other employees doesn't like country music, so he tells her, 'If you don't date me, it's going to be country music all day long.'"

"Does that make the senior employee the supervisor?" — asked Chief Justice John Roberts .

"I looked like my gay brother."

Says Anne Hathaway about her "Les Mis" hairstyle.

"The Humboldt Institute for Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research at Humboldt State University plans to sponsor scholarly lectures..."

"... and coordinate research among 11 faculty members from fields such as economics, geography, politics, psychology and sociology....

Prof "assaulted by employees of a McDonald’s in Paris who objected to his wearing a cyborg-style eyepiece while eating dinner with his family."

McDonald's claims its people were respectfu l but concerned that he was secretly filming customers and invading their privacy (under Fre...

"A 32-year-old man who died after downing dozens of roaches and worms last month to win a python at a Florida reptile store choked to death."

CNN reports the results of the medical examination , and the first comment over there is: "And now the worms are eating him."

Fearing election loss, the Obama administration rushed to "develop explicit rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by unmanned drones."

The NYT reported the other day. Its sources say they wanted "a new president [to] inherit clear standards and procedures." That m...

An interview with Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the imprisoned filmmaker behind "Innocence of Muslims."

The NYT forefronts the fact that Nakoula is angry and without remorse. I think he should be angry, and the NYT should show far more concer...

"You’re throwing me out! You’re sending me out to a doghouse! Why not put me in a manicomio?"

The "grannypod" (or MedCottage) — a $125,000 outbuilding, "essentially a portable hospital room." ( Manicomio means mad...

"I see a cure as a dynamic process, in which multiple doctors, professionals, artists, scientists and others join as a society..."

"... to converse, support each other, be open to various contributions and shape solutions that merge humanity, technology, technique, ...

74 conservative bloggers answer the question "Which of the following candidates would you most prefer to see as the GOP’s 2016 candidate?

There were 19 names to choose from , and Marco Rubio got a clear plurality, which was not surprising. What was surprising was Rand Paul at #...

If the airline "managed to get her over there," was it "obligated to get her home"?

So says the lawyer for an obese woman who died after the airline could not get her onto a plane in Hungary. They spent several relaxing week...

"Y est-ce deux dés?"

"A brilliant French song from the 1960s about life in one of France's former colonies." Yes, really brilliant. If you're i...

"Egyptians have a long history as the region's funny men."

"In many other Arab countries, Egyptians are known as 'ibn nukta,' or 'the son of jokes.' The sheer number of jokes fro...

Cliff jumpers.

"A growing bloc of emboldened liberals say they’re not afraid to watch defense spending get gouged and taxes go up on every American if...

The "all-star" iteration of "Dancing with the Stars" ends up with a no star finale.

Have you heard of Shawn Johnson, Kelly Monaco, and Melissa Rycroft?

"Young adults are earning college degrees at a record rate. Why?"

Headline at the Christian Science Monitor. Good question. Why? Doing what you're told? Nothing better to do? Putting off the time when t...

"Holiday music is often the domain of musicians who do the bare minimum."

"Available shortcuts abound: So many standards reside in the public domain, the arrangements write themselves, and expectations for the...

"Smoking 'rots' brain, says King's College study."

Says the BBC , and maybe my brain is rotted, but I can't find the scientific concept of brain "rot" in the article or any just...

Lake and Lab...

... 5 minutes of... ( Here 's the "Chuckit" ball launcher used to give young Zeus a workout.)

"Thinking about buying a house? Or a municipal bond? Be careful where you put your capital."

"Don’t put it in a state at high risk of a fiscal tailspin." There are 11 states on the "death spiral" list, beginning ...

"But I've often had the feeling that the existential dilemma is a very subjective matter..."

"... entirely depending upon the individual and the circumstances of his life, and that we 'Western intellectuals' with our wre...

"Munchausen by internet can be bad for your health forum."

So how do you smoke these fakers out? Via Metafilter , where they are "the hipsters of detecting false Internet illness claims. We did ...

At the Coldwater Café...

... you can get what you want. *** And if you're getting what you want at Amazon, please enter through this link to show support for t...

"Now that legal pot is here, will cigarette companies dust off their old plans for mass commercialization?"

NPR explores the coming of legal marijuana: In the '70s... "there were high-level conversations about adding marijuana to tobacco, ...

"But luckily for me and my husband, I’m an economist, so I have more effective tools than passive aggression."

"And some basic economic principles provided the answer." We needed to divide the chores because it is simply not efficient for t...

"Everytime I think the Democratic race card players could not get more vile..."

"... more deranged, more patronizingly demeaning to blacks, someone manages to defy even my vivid imagination." This time, it is t...

"A great example of where ['Liz and Dick'] doesn't dare go as far as reality is the way the movie depicts the end of Taylor's marriage to Eddie Fisher."

"In real life, as in the film, Burton really did demand that Taylor pick between him and Fisher, and she chose Burton—right in front of...

"It is obvious that none of you has the faintest notion of the bitter disappointment each of you has in your own way dished out to us."

A father writes to his adult children: We are seeing the miserable death throes of the fourth of your collective marriages at the same time ...

"He doesn't like living in NYC and says he would love to move west, but people in New York seem to believe that it is the only place to get a job."

A mother asks an economist — Dan Ariely — for advice , and what she gets contains some helpful general concepts for all sorts of decisionmak...

At the Dogfight Café...

... that's my seat! *** "Café" = open thread. Like that? The best way to say "yes" is — if you happen to have any sh...

"We write ethically when, as a matter of principle, we would trade places with our intended readers..."

"... and experience the consequences they do after they read our writing...." Those who write in ways that seem dense and convolut...

"It is hard to love people whom we do not respect..."

"... but it is harder still to love those whom we respect more highly than we respect ourselves." A maxim of Le Duc de La Rochefou...

"Work as Play... disciplined fun is more fun than impulsive or hedonistic fun."

From the David Foster Wallace essay "The Nature of Fun." (The entire essay appears in the collection "Both Flesh and Not: Ess...

"How about a friendly kiss goodbye"... to Larry Hagman.

A great clip reel , via Throwing Things .

"Power-hungry Bay State Democrats — eyeing another potential Senate opening if U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry joins the Obama Cabinet..."

"... are quietly discussing reinstating a 2004 law that would let Gov. Deval Patrick appoint a permanent replacement to help keep the s...

Elizabeth Smart's book will be "frank" but "appropriate" and not "salacious."

Says Chris Stewart , who's writing the book and who will be a member of the new Congress. "She has taken a professional outlook on ...

"My mother is a baptized Christian, so she made me go to church every Sunday, and I prayed four times a day until I was 14."

"And at lunchtime kids at school would giggle at my praying...I stopped praying. And two weeks later, nothing happened to me, so I didn...

"After years of holding steady... the United States abortion rate has fallen to an all-time low."

"It dropped 5 percent between 2008 and 2009, the most recent years for which data is available, the largest decline in the past decade....

"A federal jury believed the University of Iowa’s law school illegally denied a promotion to a conservative Republican because of her politics."

"However, jurors said they felt conflicted about holding a former dean personally responsible for the bias. They wanted to hold the sch...

At the 3 Dogs Café...

... sit!

Northumberlandia...

... the Lady of the North. Critics aren’t sure what to make of it. “It’s quite difficult to take it seriously,” said Tim Richardson, a Londo...

"An absolute presidential tyranny."

"Egypt is facing a horrifying coup against legitimacy and the rule of law and a complete assassination of the democratic transition....

"I want all 3 dogs to sit!"

Just now... at Meadehouse.

At the Capitalism-Is-Doomed Café...

... hang out and talk about whatever you like, and if you'd like to show some affection for the blog called Althouse, please shop Amazon...

"Everything I do turns into a disaster. I guess I really don't know what Christmas is all about."

It's all about... terror!