At the Live Free or Die Café...

... think of all the alternatives.

"The Kingdom of Dahomey became a major power in the Atlantic slave trade..."

"... with slaves supplied through raids of surrounding areas .  Oyo would sometimes put pressure on Dahomey to decrease their slave tra...

Real or political theater?

About that Bulgarian gun-pointing, gun-jamming incident ... I'm feeling truther-y. How about you?

"He went out of the room calling 'Ewing!' and returned in a few minutes accompanied by an embarrassed, slightly worn young man, with shell-rimmed glasses and scanty blond hair."

Imagine having a blond, bespectacled man somewhere in your house, going to fetch him, while yelling his name — his name being the implausibl...

Screw-up at The Atlantic leads to inane corporate memo.

Perhaps you noticed the screw-up : The Atlantic ran an article promoting Scientology — "David Miscavige Leads Scientology to Milestone ...

"Please take away my Second Amendment right."

"Do more to help us protect ourselves because what’s most likely to wake me in the early hours isn’t a man’s body slamming at my door b...

At the Ice Dog Café...

... do you know what you're doing?

"He then kissed his wife, whom he called 'Sweetie,' and told his daughters, 'I did it.'"

Oath sworn. Video at the link. First thing you see is Chief Justice Roberts walking into the room, and if you're like me, you said, ...

"Thriller, Beat it, and Bad all in one video!"

"When ever I get angry, this is what I feel like doing." Apt comments at a YouTube video I turned up in the process of trying to...

Are we people, persons, or individuals?

I got into a back-and-forth with kentuckyliz in this comments thread . She experienced "individuals" as dehumanizing, and I found ...

"More than 280,000 units — nearly half of Manhattan’s apartment stock — is rent-regulated in some fashion."

"These apartments are either godsends to those who occupy them, or daggers that twist in the hearts of everyone else, left to pay marke...

"Opt Out of State Standardized Tests" — Facebook page run by a high-ranking NYC Department of Education official.

According to the NY Post, Lisa Nielsen is promoting truancy on test days. On Thursday, she blogged that kids would learn more by cutting cla...

The Sandy Hook massacre should "force us to confront yet again the ways in which ever more of our lives are lived on a screen, in the cloud, via our computers and phones and tablets...."

Says Michael S. Rosenwald, noting that: Except for using the bathroom and eating his meals, getting a haircut was just about the only thing ...

Biden sez "I'm proud to be President of the United States."

Oops.

Bill Clinton says: Do not look down on the bitter clingers.

"Do not patronize the passionate supporters of your opponents by looking down your nose at them..." "A lot of these people li...

"As of today, Barack Obama’s presidency is half over. If that’s not enough to cheer you up..."

"... try heading over to the Insta-Wife’s new site, Helen’s Page, where you can commiserate or whatever with others who feel the same w...

"All Hostages Dead/Slaughtered in Sahara."

The Drudge headline hangs over from yesterday , even though Barack Obama will be sworn in to his second term in office later this morning. I...

"Stan Musial, one of baseball’s greatest hitters and a revered figure in the storied history of the St. Louis Cardinals..."

"... the player they called Stan the Man — died Saturday. He was 92."

At the Swan Lake Café...

... you were right. Those really were swans out there on icy Lake Mendota this afternoon.

"Sometimes a shadow moved against a dressing-room blind above, gave way to another shadow, an indefinite procession of shadows, that rouged and powdered in an invisible glass."

Earlier today, I made a "café" post out of a photograph of a tablescape that included my small toy robot, and betamax3000 used it...