Eight Years of Madoffs: Frank Rich, NY Times: "Three days after the world learned that $50 billion may have disappeared in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, The Times led its front page of Dec. 14 with the revelation of another $50 billion rip-off. This time the vanished loot belonged to American taxpayers. That was our collective contribution to the $ ( Read more... )

One of the memes floating around at the moment is for one to comment in someone's post in order to be asked to explain seven items from one's interest list. For supergee and classics_cat:

Chindogu (both of them asked about this one)
Chindogu is sort of a Japanese Dadaist concept. It's the art of taking something useful and making it useless in a way that's ( Read more... )

Tomorrow I will be attending both the Boston Vegetarian Food Festival in Roxbury and a friend's autumnal potluck dinner party. I need to cook something seasonally appropriate. My top contenders so far are sweet potato pie, Jewish apple cake, and something my late Grandma Liesel used to make for me, Topfenknödel ( Read more... )

Reading Your Baby's Mind:
New research on infants finally begins to answer the question: what's going on in there?
Excerpt: A wealth of new research is leading pediatricians and child psychologists to rethink their long-held beliefs about the emotional and intellectual abilities of even very young babies. In 1890, psychologist William James ( Read more... )

I spent a few hours tonight at the home of my mom's friend's son and his wife, over in the south end. The friend, Janet, was visiting for Xmas, along with her daughter, and the wife's mother and brother. (Christ, that looks so convoluted, but I can't think of any clearer way to write it right now. Deal ( Read more... )