Sensual aftereffects of rain.

There is respite from all the rain, and now the front garden is teeming with insects that I'm afraid are baby mosquitoes. If anybody nee...

WAC Life.

For Memorial Day, here are some scans from my mother's "WAC Life/War Department Pamphlet," dated May 1945. The cover: Chapter...

The answer is

less round . Jeremy seems to be obsessing about his head and his fingernails after last night's dinner at which Tonya and I finally m...

Misreadings.

Tonya has some thoughts on blog comments generally and specifically on my experience with them. She notes that the main problem she's h...

The truth about bra sales and breast size.

Instapundit links to Living in Europe about how big breasts are getting in Denmark. The news comes from a lingerie company: ""We...

A weary Kerryism.

The Washington Post interviewed John Kerry: During the interview, he eschewed the soaring rhetoric on freedom and democracy that are common...

Octopus in the rain.

Today is another one of the many days when traffic is redirected in Madison so a race of some sort can take place on the city streets. Somet...

About that comments function....

I've had a week or so of experience with the new Blogger comments function, so let me pause and assess and explain. At first, there were...

"You have to understand. There was a war."

The AP reports : Bells tolled from the National Cathedral and swing music from the 1940s rang out at the Mall as veterans of World War II as...

The high cost of hot chocolate ... and the joys and anxieties of speaking without notes.

Jeremy explains "why a hot chocolate at starbucks is $3, while a hot chocolate at borders is $133," with suitable photographic il...

Kerry's mysterious mix of issues and the muted left.

Adam Nagourney, in today's NYT, examines the mystery of "Why the Democrats' Left Wing Is Muted" about Kerry, given the po...

Old bumper sticker fulfilled, but Al Gore isn't.

Surely, you've seen this famous lefty bumper sticker : Luckily, there was a high level of competence on the part of our soldiers, even ...

The miniature mogul of blogging.

So I read How Can I Sex Up This Blog Business? (which I nerdily picked up on via How Appealing ). Who knew Wonkette and Gawker and Gizmodo ...

Lust for Lunch.

We had some lunch today at Crave, which seems to be a worthy new restaurant, just off State Street on Gorham (easy to miss if you're wal...

"What scenes would one like to have filmed?"

This is a great question that Robert Hughes asked Vladimir Nabokov in 1965. You can read his answer in one of my favorite books, Strong Opin...

Reliving the chad experience ... and CNN preening.

Last night, we watched CNN Election 2000: 36 Days That Gripped the Nation , which came in the mail yesterday. I explained my reasons for wan...

The blatantly partisan blogosphere.

This blog is a mix of things. Like many, perhaps most, blogs, the mix is based on what catches my attention and inspires me. I enjoy discove...

Whatever happened to "minimizing the template"?

I just noticed that the photographs overlapped with the sidebar. Why I spent as much time on changing the template as I did last night witho...

Minimizing the template.

I've switched to one of the new Blogger templates. This is called Minima. I hope it's subdued enough for you. It's aggressively ...

Amazon package of the day.

I really don't want to say what percentage of my days include the delivery of a package from Amazon. I just feel like saying what just c...

The Times tsks about blogging.

The NYT is running an article about people who blog obsessively, so I'm going to blog it obsessively. First, there's an anecdote ab...

So what is the official Columbia Journalism Review position about factchecking quotes?

Zachary Roth at CJR Campaign Desk thinks he's found a way to attack me for "attacking" Kerry : Ann Althouse thinks she's ...

"Death with Dignity," "Compassionate Care," and federalism.

The NYT, reporting reporting on yesterday's Oregon v. Ashcroft case (which I discussed at some length here ), quotes Dr. Greg Hamilton,...

The big American Idol revelation.

Why not begin with the national anthem? It is American Idol. And it's at least as momentous as a baseball game. Is this the beginning? ...

Doctors, federalism and the Controlled Substances Act.

Today, the Ninth Circuit issued an opinion in Oregon v. Ashcroft rejecting the "Ashcroft Directive," the Attorney General's p...

Why I want Kerry to pick John McCain for VP.

I keep thinking the old Joni Mitchell song "Carey"--listen here --and can see it would be easy to take the lyrics and do a song p...

Lithwick on O'Connor.

Dahlia Lithwick witnesses a luncheon appearance by Justice O'Connor and observes, "she seems to have no idea how extraordinary she...

Geek God.

Maybe--as discussed in Slate --the universe was created by some science nerd who never even got to see his own creation, let alone rule over...

Oh no! TiVo is making me watch commercials!

Here's some important technology research, reported by Mediapost : [R]esearch concludes that DVRs "recapture" TV commercial ex...

Kerry's embarrassing history lecture.

The Boston Globe reports John Kerry's response to criticism about his proposal to avoid accepting the nomination at the Democratic conv...

Help Jeremy

buy a platform bed . And marvel at the power of seven, as each bed is named according to one of the seven dwarves and one of the seven deadl...

The American Idol finale.

Well, I found that all quite ugly and boring. I thought it was just mean to show over and over that the judges preferred Fantasia, especiall...

The peony conversation.

The trees in my neighborhood darken all the yards and lead good gardeners to indulge heavily in ferns and other groundcover instead of flowe...

Mammary government.

After the Janet Jackson nipple hoopla, it's nice to see the Brits having their own little media nipple problem. The Guardian reports: F...

Thumping global warming sermonette.

Is "The Day After Tomorrow" going to be worth seeing? Here 's the Film Threat review. Bottom line: “The Day after Tomorrow” is...

Don't forget your "I Believe" bingo card...

...for tonight's big American Idol finale . (Explained here in the Television Without Pity Idol Speculation thread.)

About those movies....

Tonya's talking about my profile: she hasn't read any of my favorite books and she hasn't seen any of my movies. She thinks I m...