On the Glacial Drumlin Trail...

... east of Madison, beginning in Cottage Grove , we biked for about 18 miles today. I like an overcast sky with photographable clouds. But ...

Obama on Iraq: Mission Accomplished.

And now he would like you to pay attention to domestic issues. Okay? ADDED: "The war is over"... remember Phil Ochs singing that? ...

At the Zaha Hadid Café...

... you can talk about the "urban carpet" effect of architecture in a "somewhat declining downtown" ... or anything else...

Poison gas used on schoolgirls in Afghanistan.

"There are some people who are always intimidating girls from going to school."

"What Audrey does in 'Breakfast at Tiffany’s' is not uninteresting, but it is far from the modern woman..."

"...  even the one introduced to American audiences in the persons of Bette Davis, Irene Dunne, Margaret Sullavan, the other Hepburn (t...

"Did Lomborg genuinely have a change of heart?"

"Or is he just trying to figure out a new way to sell books? After all, now that the prospects for a global effort to tackle climate ch...

"Man, those sleeping-inside-a-giant-yam years are the worst."

"But it's all worth it when you can finally relax and listen to your huge infant-headed son's butt through a tin can on a strin...

Seriously? The GOP has a 10-point lead on the generic ballot? Actually, it's more like a 14-point lead.

After trying to minimize the 10-point lead — "probably an outlier of sorts"— Nate Silver delivers the bad news to NYT readers: ......

"Every week, I get in a taxi, ask the driver to take me to his or her favorite restaurant."

A good idea ? But: I wish I didn't feel this way -- I wish I were not so cynical a person -- but unfortunately, the very first thing I t...

"Americans are too damn polite..."

"... so that a conversation between them consists of each person trying to say what the other person would have said had it been their ...

"Ivy, when she wasn't repeating whatever Gretchen said, told us that this collection was so awe-inspiring and soul-wrenching that it felt like giving birth. Well, Ivy?"

"You made yourself one ugly baby."

"Brooklyn College said it was 'regrettable that Mr. Bruce Kesler misunderstands the intentions of the Common Reader experience and the broader context of this selection.'"

Reports The Daily News , picking up the story that we were talking about here yesterday. Hey, now we get to check out the Daily News commen...

"Who else thinks Beck is more of a tent revivalist than a political pitchman, and that his ultimate goal is to win souls for the L.D.S. Church?"

That's a question from Reihan Salam, which Ross Douthat answers in the most absurdly equivocal way: I don’t know if the Fox News host ac...

"This looks good," I said...

... and iChatted Meade this link ... and it's for dinner tonight! ADDED: AND:

The war monument.

This is the "War" side of the State Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Indianapolis. This closeup shows one soldier using...

Things that didn't meet the Huffington Post standards.

"$100,000 For Glenn Beck's Sex Tape" gets attention via Memeorandum ,  but HuffPo has deleted it . Newsbusters calls attention...

Liberal fascism.

Last night, I posted a picture of Union Terminal in Cincinnati that made Dead Julius say: Nice American flag drapped just like a big Nazi fl...

"We have the nirvana that people are looking for."

Says Rick Stengel, the managing editor of Time Magazine. Eh... I think I'll look for the nirvana that you can't look for. That seems...

"I’m sure there are some residents that are like, 'Wait a minute, why is my road closed down?'" said Lance Armstrong.

In Madison, yesterday.

As long as we're talking about Presidents and their bikes...

Some photos... Yeah, "Please Do Not Touch or Take Photos." I didn't take these photos. I've never even been to Kennebunkpo...

Drudge is giving Obama a hard time this morning.

There's this at the top : Drudge dogged him back in the spring of '08 for looking dorky on a bicycle. You'd think his people wo...

A baby's first word was "Obama."

Something I overheard the other day.

"I just updated my will and trust and, with heavy heart, cut out what was a significant bequest to my alma mater, Brooklyn College."

Says Bruce Kesler. The reason: The school chose one book to give to all incoming freshman to read to give a sense of a "common experie...

Inside Union Terminal.

(In Cincinnati.)

"He passed doing what he loved..."

"... and had his go fast face on as he pulled onto the trac. The world lost one of its brightest lights today. God Bless Peter and the ...

"I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."

The #1 regret of the dying. (Via Instapundit .) Why are you doing what you are doing? Do you need death staring you in the face to take tha...

"Moto Fever: Dig It."

No, you dig it . We're rolling out.

A photograph taken for a very specific reason.

"With Paterson, the Simple Facts Can Get Complicated."

Okay, who wrote that NYT headline ? I read it, and my brain plays (the greatest single of all time) The Who's "Substitute" : B...

"Simpson is not only a misogynistic old geezer, he's a plagiarizing old geezer."

My dear , it's called an allusion . The error isn't stealing, it's assuming people get it.

A superior expanse of roadway.

( Enlarge. ) ... somewhere in Cincinnati. This is the kind of thing you know isn't pretty and you'd hate to have in your neighborhoo...

Liberty Tire.

( Enlarge. ) ... a building we rolled by ... as we left Cincinnati yesterday. IN THE COMMENTS: Pogo said: Classic racist American building. ...

The manly mosaic men of Union Terminal.

"German-born artist Winold Reiss was commissioned in 1932 to design murals for the Cincinnati’s railroad station, called Union Terminal...

"How could a bunch of people who ran such a brilliant campaign be doing such a lousy job at the politics of governing?"

6 theories are presented. Rank them. The theories are smart, but the columnist, Michael Tomasky, has laughable ideas about what Obama should...

Peter Berkowitz collects quotes from 2008 saying conservatism in America is over forever.

And: The credit for galvanizing ordinary people and placing individual freedom and limited government back on the national agenda principall...

"They have a right to rally. But what they don't have the right [to] do is distort what Dr. King's dream was about."

Said Al Sharpton, narrowly defining rights. It's so close to the time when everyone was talking about the mosque near Ground Zero and e...

Boys and their water animals.

From the base of a fountain in downtown Cincinnati .

Let's take a closer look at those 310 million tits.

I love the Simpson "tit" flap. Even as the "Ground Zero Mosque" saved us from having to talk about the economy, that gia...

Timothy Egan's NYT column "Building a Nation of Know-Nothings" requires fisking...

... and I'm relieved to see that John Hinderaker has already done the grisly task .

"Alan Simpson Didn't Need to Apologize."

Says Professor Bainbridge , via Instapundit ... and, as you know, I agree . Well, you know, now, there is a solution for your apology mista...

The 33 Chilean miners, who know they will be trapped below ground for months, display their living conditions to the world...

... and sing the national anthem to express their appreciation that people have the courage to go to all the trouble of rescuing them. Thin...

Transparencies.

Lunching alone.

Roy Edroso imagines that Leslie Savan had the courage to "dispute Muslim articles of faith."

He's presenting something I wrote to his readers, who follow his direction and call me an idiot, but he's got it wrong. I blogged (...

A Democratic member of the House joked that Nancy Pelosi might die and got a laugh from his audience and how does the NYT report the incident?

"Conservative Democrat Jokes That Pelosi Might Die." Those terrible conservatives!

At the Mystery Photo Café...

... what are you puzzling over?

"I'm desperate to go back to normal. I'm downgrading and going a little smaller, to a D or a double D."

The ever-changing definition of "normal." Though it's been more than nine months since she went under the knife, [Heidi] Monta...

Fake outrage over Alan Simpson's twist on the phrase "sucking on the government tit."

It's a standard expression. Simpson came up with a brilliantly memorable variation to describe social security: "a milk cow with 3...

Ken Mehlman comes out.

To me, this is non-news. For one thing, I thought everyone knew he was gay. For another thing, who cares about Ken Mehlman anymore? Mehlman...

At the Cincinnati Café...

... eat the rich.

" I was ten years old back in 1970 and clearly remember the loud boom that traveled across Lake Monona and awakened me in the middle of the night."

Another memory of the Sterling Hall bombing, which took place 40 years ago yesterday, from an emailer who would like to keep her name privat...

"How Lisa Murkowski (might have) lost."

Explaining Joe Miller.

Don't go trespassing in abandoned buildings at night!

Blackout--The Scene of the Crime from Justin Warren on Vimeo . *** (Disclosure: My son Chris worked on this project.) ( Facebook link. )

"Coordinated Attacks Strike 13 Towns and Cities in Iraq."

Obama's war.

"The False and 'Seedy' Claim That Obama Is Muslim."

Get it? "Seedy"? The Nation quotes Franklin Graham: “I think the president's problem is that he was born a Muslim. His father ...

99-cent TV show rentals from iTunes.

That would be nice.

"Kim Jong Il, the supreme commander of the Korean People’s Army, deeply concerned over the soldiers’ diet."

The title of a painting from an exhibit called "“Flowers for Kim Il Sung: Art and Architecture from the Democratic People’s Republic of...

"Mommy, where is your boo-boo?"

The 3-year-old could see that mother was hurting.

"I was there when it happened, asleep in an apartment about eight blocks east of Sterling Hall."

Michael Haz writes about the bombing that took place here in Madison 40 years ago today: The blast threw me out of bed. I scrambled into the...

At the Mushroom Café...

... can you feel it?

"Three years of intense protest activity at the University of Wisconsin reached terrible superlatives on August 24th of this year."

The year was 1970. An explosion so powerful it broke windows six blocks away, and so loud it woke up citizens over six miles from campus red...

"Avastin prolongs life but drug is too expensive for NHS patients."

We've talked about the limitations on Avastin in the United States. It's much worse in the UK .

Sherrod...

... deflected.

"But if comedy has an Obama problem, it doesn't have much to do with ideology. The guy is just difficult to mock."

Claims the American Prospect: Politicians who make good targets for humor tend to have a personality feature or physical characteristic, lik...

Talk about a camera "capture."

This one captured a thief.  (And hey, it's in Madison.)

"I realized how people end up in the grave."

"Because that one moment [snaps her fingers] of just breaking or feeling like I can't, I can't go on, it's too heavy. That ...

"The bogusity of the New York Times' story about how technology leads more park visitors into trouble."

Nice takedown by Jack Shafer. (But isn't the correct spelling "bogosity"? Try saying it. I know the adjective is "bogus,...

"But tolerance is one of the first and most awkward questions raised by any examination of Islamism."

Writes Christopher Hitchens , noting the naivete of the talk of religious tolerance in defense of the mosque near Ground Zero: As Western Eu...

"Recording booth will capture memories of Sterling Hall bombing."

"The booth will be located in the Memorial Library, 728 State St., from Monday, Aug. 23-Sunday, Aug. 29, and is open to the public. Rep...

"I really believed that the revolution was coming."

"And then, when that happened, we just said, 'Oh no. Oh, no no no.' Everything came to a grinding halt. No one could do anythin...

"The terror is right here in our state, in our city, and on our campus. The terror is not something that happens elsewhere to others."

The Wisconsin State Journal republishes the editorial it ran on August 25, 1970. Tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Sterlin...

Lose weight...

Drink 2 glasses of water before each meal.

My faith in humanity is restored.

Someone who dialed the wrong number just said "I'm sorry." The other day, this guy said "no problem," as if I'd ...

About that Daily Caller article claiming a lot bloggers "on the Republican side" are "secretly feeding on cash from political campaigns."

The first paragraph of this attention -getting article by Jonathan Strong says there's "a form of partisan payola that erases the ...

"Harmony, gee I really love you, and I want to love you forever, and dream of the never, never, never leaving harmony."

Today's theme song. IN THE COMMENTS: c3 said: Professor: Your age is showing. 70's Elton John. Now I have to know which of his early...

Two.

( Enlarge .) One.

Protest and counterprotest in NYC — 1,000 against the mosque near Ground Zero and 200 for it.

They were mostly peaceful , and they didn't really disagree at a high level of abstract principle. All — or mostly all — believe in free...

33 men, trapped 2300 feet underground, must wait 4 months for rescue.

A mine in Chile. For 17 days, there was no contact with the men. Now, there is communication — such as the note from the miners: "All ...

Hibiscus.

Butterfly.

It's not a hummingbird.

At the botanical garden today, 2 women were staring at a little beastie that was going at the butterfly bush. It was not a butterfly. (Enlar...

At the Water Lily Café...

... it's all so clear now.

"Robot suits to aid elderly Japanese farmers with toiling in the fields."

"People aged 65 and older are a key pillar of the agricultural work force, accounting for about 60 percent of the agricultural populati...

"The government is pushing these food poisoning events because they want to over-regulate."

Writes commenter SWWBO in  yesterday's egg thread: You should look into some of the regulations currently being considered by the FDA an...

Maureen Dowd says "Rush Limbaugh... mocks 'Imam Obama' as 'America’s first Muslim president'" but what did he actually say?

Here 's Dowd's column. You can search the radio show's transcripts here . It was a joke : "If it was laudatory to call Bill...

Tweets are so terribly transitory...

... unless... unless....  No. They are. Let it go.

"I hate where we are today. I hate the Internet. I hate the instant-news cycle," says National Enquirer editor Barry Levine.

"I yearn for the days when we could pass off a reporter as a waiter at Liz Taylor and Larry Fortensky’s wedding and get the inside scoo...

Obama's approval numbers in the swing states.

Where it really counts.

Whatever happened to Darfur?

Have you noticed that we don't notice it anymore? IN THE COMMENTS: mesquito says: Darfur has contracted herpes and is hiding from the oz...

Obama is more like Reagan than Carter, says Mark Schmitt.

But he needs the economy to recover so we can perceive it. Reagan recovered... in time for the "Morning in America" election of 19...