In The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Mr. Murbles the solicitor doesn't seem to have how much sympathy for - or let's say, much appreciation of - the wounds still suffered years later by survivors of the War like George Fentiman. Wimsey understands a little better:

"Poor George inherited a weakly strain from his grandmother, I'm afraid ( Read more... )

Just watched Frost/Nixon, the movie of the making of those historic interviews. Good movie, well made and well worth the watching (although it did leave me with questions like, what's the girl's role in this? just in order to have one woman with a bigger speaking part than Pat Nixon?). And of course I've loved following Frank Langella ever since ( Read more... )

"You know, X basically spout out ideas that nobody ever does anything about." In your opinion, which broad professional stereotype better matches X?

Poll

Feel encouraged to expand and/or vent in comments. Context will be revealed this time tomorrow (if you aren't such a political junkie that you recognize it already).

Context, added later: New ( Read more... )

(Rollin' Stone ( Read more... )

Item: This morning I mowed only half the lawn; tomorrow I shall tend to the second half. Partly this was sheer self-preservation against the heat and humidity, of course, but I have another motive as well: I hope that running the mower two mornings in a row will terrorize the rabbits more than only the once. (Out of simple vanity, I mowed the front ( Read more... )

Happy Star Wars Day: May the Fourth Be With You!

In other news, this from D under the heading "Wellesley College doing it right":http://www.happyplace.com/23246/principals-threat-to-ruin-students-college-plans-

Main mystery of this particular day: WTF with the traffic on I-93?! In the morning, wide open clear smooth cruising all the way to 16, I am in to work like 20 minutes early; in the afternoon, the cloverleaf locks up completely, worst traffic home I can remember in a long time, takes me almost an hour and a half ( Read more... )

Item: Butch Cassidy: What happened to the old bank? It was beautiful.
Guard: People kept robbing it.
Butch Cassidy: Small price to pay for beauty.
But who's been robbing the Globe masthead, then? Or the LJ entry posting interface, for that matter?

Item: Allan Calhamer, inventor of the game Diplomacy has died. Only a curmudgeon would jump to the ( Read more... )

from The Economist leader, "So, Mitt, what do you really believe?":
A businessman without a credible plan to fix a problem stops being a credible businessman. So does a businessman who tells you one thing at breakfast and the opposite at supper. Indeed, all this underlines the main doubt: nobody knows who this strange man really is. It is half a ( Read more... )

Tom Goldstein lays out for SCOTUSblog a timeline of what went wrong in breaking the news of the Supreme Court's ruling on the Affordable Care Act: "We're getting wildly differing assessments". It's not just a simple matter of "Hah-hah, Fox News rushes to partisan judgment (and CNN too)," it was a combination of many elements, the only morally ( Read more... )